The WHO now ties roughly 871,000 deaths a year to loneliness, about 100 an hour, which makes connection health infrastructure, not a self-care mood.

Read the verb: linked to, not caused by. The effect size rivals smoking, but illness isolates people as much as isolation sickens them. What the data does show is who carries it, and it is not who you picture:

  • The loneliest group in the world is teenage girls, at 24.3 percent
  • Loneliness climbs as income falls: 24.3 percent in low-income countries, down to 10.6 in high-income ones
  • It runs highest among the young, not the old, because contact is not connection

Nobody signs a form saying a girl in a poor country should carry the highest risk. They just decline to build the thing that would carry it for her.