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☆ There is no loneliness epidemic
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-07 | by ( Eliza Relman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +17 min

With the report, a steady trickle of headlines about the epidemic turned into a firehose: "Loneliness is at epidemic levels and it's killing Americans" (USA Today); "This Epidemic of Isolation Is as Harmful as Smoking" (Bloomberg); "America's Loneliness Epidemic Comes for the Restaurant" (The Atlantic). There's one problem: The loneliness epidemic doesn't exist. Even the authors caution in their meta-analysis that "the frequently used term 'loneliness epidemic' seems exaggerated." Calling it a "loneliness epidemic," then, may be a bit like calling COVID a "sneezing pandemic." "There are many, many surveys that are just making up questions about loneliness and are not using the UCLA Loneliness Scale or some other validated loneliness scale," she says.

Persons: Vivek Murthy, Murthy, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Sen, Chris Murphy, Ruth, University of Michigan —, Eric Klinenberg, Julianne Holt, it's, Dave Sbarra, Holt, David Riesman, Lunstad, I've, —, Sbarra, Klinenberg, Adam Mastroianni, " Mastroianni, Mastroianni, Biden, isn't, Jill Lepore, voicemails, There's, Jerome Adams Organizations: Bloomberg, Business, York, Gallup, University of Michigan, New York University, Brigham Young University, University of Arizona, Bell, University of California Los, Commerce, UCLA, Republican, Democratic Locations: Connecticut, Brooklyn, University of California Los Angeles, America, Washington, DC, COVID

☆ You probably think people are getting ruder and less nice than they were in the past. You're also probably wrong.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-12 | by ( Kelsey Vlamis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Another Gallup poll from 2019 similarly found 77% of people believed moral values in the US were getting worse. Interestingly, survey data also suggested people believed the moral decline began around the time of their birth, regardless of when they were born. At the same time, Mastroianni said the survey data suggests there hasn't actually been moral decline — just a consistent perception of it. Rather than morality declining, there's actually some evidence to suggest that people have higher morals than in the past. Another potential explanation for the illusion of morality decline could simply be the number of people in the world interacting is increasing.

Persons: Adam Mastroianni, Mastroianni, hasn't, I've, gdL8aM5Jrd — Adam Mastroianni, there's, SarhSipHQv — Adam Mastroianni Organizations: Service, Gallup, US, Federal Aviation Administration Locations: Wall, Silicon

☆ Opinion | Your Brain Has Tricked You Into Thinking Everything Is Worse
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( Adam Mastroianni | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Perhaps no political promise is more potent or universal than the vow to restore a golden age. What these political myths have in common is an understanding that the golden age is definitely not right now. I and my colleague Daniel Gilbert at Harvard have found evidence for that bug, which we recently published in the journal Nature. We first collected 235 surveys with over 574,000 responses total and found that, overwhelmingly, people believe that humans are less kind, honest, ethical and moral today than they were in the past. Respondents of all sorts — young and old, liberal and conservative, white and Black — consistently agreed: the golden age of human kindness is long gone.

Persons: Caesar Augustus, Medicis, Adolf Hitler, Xi Jinping, “ Bongbong ” Marcos Jr, Donald Trump’s “, ”, Joe Biden’s, Daniel Gilbert, pollsters, — Organizations: Harvard Locations: China, Philippines

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