#loneliness-epidemic

#loneliness-epidemic

Since becoming CEO of Molson Coors last fall, I've thought a lot about the need to champion not just beer - a cultural staple of conviviality for thousands of years - but the occasions where beer has played a role in bringing people together. And indeed, the beverage industry thinks in terms of "occasions," but it's obvious that we're in the middle of something culturally and economically, broadly thought of as strain on Americans' wallets mixed with what some have dubbed a "loneliness epidemic."

For much of the world, technology has become so intertwined with our day-to-day lives that it influences everything. Our relationships, the care we seek, how we work, what we do to protect ourselves, even the things we choose to learn and when. It would be understandable to read this as a dystopian nightmare conjured up by E.M. Forster or Ernest Cline. Yet, we are on the verge of something fundamentally different. We've caught glimpses of a future that values autonomy, empathy, and individual expertise.

When engaging in personal conversation, using generative AI can alter perceptions and social interactions between individuals. Society has adapted to autocorrect, yet outsourcing emotional labor may result in greater dependency on technology.

The original study's alarming trends largely disappeared when properly graphed, revealing that the increase in time spent alone was only 24 minutes per day over 17 years.