{"id":125317,"date":"2026-01-08T16:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T16:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/125317\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T16:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T16:27:08","slug":"infrastructure-and-social-norms-contribute-to-u-s-loneliness-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/125317\/","title":{"rendered":"Infrastructure and social norms contribute to U.S.\u2019 loneliness problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  Jan. 8, 2026 7 AM PT  <\/p>\n<p>To the editor: Peter Smith\u2019s recent article left me wondering why efforts to form social connections often fail (<a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/world-nation\/story\/2025-12-31\/efforts-to-reconnect-americans-face-challenges-in-lonely-time\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cEfforts to reconnect Americans face challenges in a lonely time,\u201d<\/a> Dec. 31). As a psychologist, I believe current interventions fall short for two reasons: We take an \u201call-or-nothing\u201d approach to building intimacy and we lack the infrastructure to support the spontaneous and frequent interactions needed to build trust.<\/p>\n<p>As the <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S1040260823000163\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">social convoy model<\/a> suggests, a healthy support system isn\u2019t built from a few all-purpose relationships, but from a variety of people who show up for us in different ways. As an immigrant, my \u201cemotional support friends\u201d live all over the world \u2014 Chicago, San Francisco, India and New Zealand. My \u201cemergency friend,\u201d however, is a 65-year-old woman who lives down the street. We meet rarely, but she is the first to show up with medicine when I am sick.<\/p>\n<p>Infrastructure in the U.S. makes this problem worse. Having a social life here demands time and planning. Naturally, people want that effort to be worth it and place high expectations on each interaction. But if we could meet the same people spontaneously and often, with minimal effort, we might feel more satisfied. In India, I can walk to the park at the end of my street knowing I will bump into neighbors, or ask a friend to join me right away for street food down the block.<\/p>\n<p>The cure for loneliness isn\u2019t just meeting more people, but feeling more moments of connection. To address the loneliness epidemic, we need to value the specific role each person plays, accept the needs they cannot fulfill, and design neighborhoods that support easy, frequent social interaction.<\/p>\n<p>Sumana Sri, Claremont<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 8, 2026 7 AM PT To the editor: Peter Smith\u2019s recent article left me wondering why efforts&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[16273,59026,2072,4416,65196,65195,8477,8076,48,52,51,46812,65194,65193,47,50,49,42726,65197,1291,2281],"class_list":["post-125317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-connection","tag-cure","tag-editor","tag-effort","tag-emergency-friend","tag-frequent-interaction","tag-india","tag-infrastructure","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-loneliness","tag-loneliness-problem","tag-lonely-time","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-more-people","tag-peter-smith","tag-street","tag-u-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}