Is there any social issue that elected officials don’t think they can solve? Loneliness is a highly complex phenomenon, produced by an interplay of cultural components and personal psychological attributes. One senator thinks he can fix it with bureaucracy and “public awareness.”
On Tuesday, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy announced the introduction of his “National Strategy for Social Connection,” a bill that would create “a federal office to combat the growing epidemic of American loneliness, develops anti-loneliness strategies, and fosters best practices to promote social connection,” as Murphy put it.
The idea that the federal government can solve loneliness is naive and laughable. If there is an “epidemic of loneliness” in America—a big if—its causes are surely so diverse that no group of bureaucrats is going to dislodge it. And certainly not with the silly solutions Murphy proposes.
Murphy’s bill would create an “Office of Social Connection Policy to advise the president on loneliness and isolation,” order federal agencies to implement a “national strategy on social connection,” and start a public awareness campaign to educate people about fostering connections.
“Similar to existing national guidelines on nutrition, sleep, and physical activity, the Office would issue research-based best practices on how to better engage and connect with our local communicates,” Murphy’s summary of the bill states.
U.S. nutrition guidelines, of course, have a long history of being ridiculously unscientific and plagued by cronyism. And whatever one thinks about nutrition and physical activity guidelines today, there’s no denying that Americans are massively overweight and way too sedentary. So, I’d hardly call these things models of efficacy.
In fact, national guidelines on how to be less lonely are bound to work about as well as nutrition and physical fitness guidelines have: not at all.
Hellbound and Down 