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"There are all the concerts we didn’t go to, the plays & dinner parties we didn’t enjoy...This is a loss of emotional nutrition. It manifests socially as loneliness," writes David Brooks in the New York Times, referencing our survey data suggesting that 61% of young adults felt "serious loneliness" during the pandemic.
Read MoreHave you interacted more with your neighbors in the last year? During the pandemic, people have grown closer to their neighbors and sometimes relied on them during crises." There is this quality of a powerful shared experience, and many people have really helped one another,” says Rick Weissbourd in this Wall Street Journal piece by Anne Marie Chaker.
Read MoreResearch shows that acting with kindness and care makes people feel good by building connections with others and reinforcing a positive view of themselves. This sense of connection is all the more important in a time when students may not be interacting in person. Kindness and caring are contagious—they can spread and influence people to do good deeds beyond their existing networks.
This session will share a strategy to help students practice intentional acts of caring and to share and learn from their experiences. Learn how to help students reflect on and discuss how to encourage more kindness and caring, for themselves and others, at their school and beyond. They will practice regular intentional acts so they become routine and normalized parts of students’ lives. The activity encourages a variety of kind and caring acts, including self-care.
Read More"Finding simple things in common with other people can be a powerful way to help kids develop empathy for people who look different from them," writes Christine Koh for CNN.
Koh provides seven helpful suggestions for how parents can support their children through latest wave of anti-Asian American violence.
In this New York Times piece, Richard Schiffman talks with Rick Weissbourd about how young adults and the elderly could be less isolated if they had more contact.
“The elderly have so much to share with young people — wisdom about love, work, friendship, mortality and many other things...young people have so much to share with the elderly about a rapidly changing world — not just technology, but new and important ways of thinking about race and racism, justice, sexuality and gender and other critical issues,” says Weissbourd.
“Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has displaced all our lives in different ways and although a concern, a general increase in loneliness across all age groups is to be expected. But the pandemic seems to be having a particularly crushing impact on young people and urgent action must be taken to protect the mental health of this demographic,” writes Philip Adkins, National IAPT Clinical Lead at Vita Health Group.
Read More“We’re using too many outdated character assessment tools that aren’t based on research, creative thinking or a commitment to equity,” Rick Weissbourd tells The Washington Post.
Until college admission offices are equipped to effectively assess these attributes in applicants, he said, they are likely to default to drawing conclusions from resources like social media.
Do zoom calls and social media platforms actually make us feel more lonely?
"Managing our health and well-being as a global community through this pandemic and beyond requires prudent attention to a great paradox of our time: we have more connections than ever, yet we are living through an epidemic of loneliness," writes Steve Boehlke in The Room.
Read MoreHow is the college experience been affected by remote classes?
"I imagined making long-lasting memories with my friends, but I’m just feeling disconnected from them.”
“It’s the end of freshman year and I haven’t made any new friends at school."
Marcia Morris (M.D.) mentions our work in Psychology Today and suggests how students can cope with the emotional and social loneliness.
"The moral of the lesson is to assume good intentions. Give people benefit of the doubt... We have to take a step back and really think positive thoughts and collect ourselves and assume that people mean well,” emphasizes Milena Batanova, MCC's Research and Evaluation Manager.
The Boston Globe’s Kara Baskin adds, "The friend who appears to be ghosting might be depressed or anxious herself."
Read MoreHuman beings were never meant to be in total isolation for so long.
"While many have been able to isolate with their partner or roommates, single folks and folks living alone are often in true isolation," writes Gretchen Brown in Rewire.
Here we are at this young age wanting to start things, wanting to go out into the world and try everything and be young and travel and see each other," Andreatta (23) says. "But we are stuck in our apartments."
Hadia Bakkar talks with young adults, mentioning our loneliness report in Npr's MindShift.
Read MoreHave a conversation with a grocery store employee. Enjoy an over-the-fence laugh with a neighbor.
“A lot of people are so depleted right now that a simple hello can be really meaningful,” says Rick Weissbourd in his interview with Anne Marie Chaker in The Wall Street Journal.
Read More"About half of lonely young adults in the survey reported that no one in the past few weeks had 'taken more than just a few minutes' to ask how they are doing in a way that made them feel like the person 'genuinely cared,'” emphasizes Ash-har Quraishi, referring to our recent loneliness research.
Find out more in this KATC piece about a hotline that connects teens with peers in an effort to combat pandemic loneliness.
Check out this segment on CBS News that references our Loneliness Research and highlights the report's findings. Lana Zak interviews Dr. Roger McIntyre, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, about examining the impact of the pandemic on mental health.
Read MoreHow can young adults meaningfully connect with their peers during school closures and remote learning?
Authors of our recent loneliness report emphasize that we we must shift from “Americans’ focus on the self” toward “the common good,” writes Kerry McDonald in this Foundation for Economic Education article.
Research shows that gratitude is a predictor of both physical and mental well-being and can be regarded as a moral emotion related to recognizing the feelings and intentions of others. In turn, gratitude can lead to increased motivation to reciprocate and extend generosity to others.
In this session, hosted by Harvard’s Making Caring Common project, educators will explore a strategy to help students recognize and express gratitude to others in school and beyond. Click through to learn more and register today!
Read More"We perpetuate dehumanizing stereotypes of each other that diminish our capacity to care; and we define success as being self-sufficient and achievement oriented rather than relationship oriented,” write Rick Weissbourd, Making Caring Common faculty director, Niobe Way, founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity, and Marc Brackett, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence in this piece publish by The Hill.
Read MoreHow can college students stay mentally strong during these challenging times?
Dr. Aviva Legatt from Forbes mentions our loneliness research and suggests three specific ways that youth can stay mentally strong during the Covid era and beyond.
Read More"Loneliness has been indicated as a risk factor for overall mortality and conditions from stroke to heart disease. It is also associated with depression and anxiety," writes Anuradha Varanasi in Forbes about a new empathetic phone call program to reduce loneliness, depression, and anxiety.
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