The numbers on loneliness and belonging.
If you feel disconnected, you are not unusual and you are not broken. Here is what the best available research actually says, every figure named, dated and linked to its original source, so you can check every one of them yourself.
We would rather show you real research than repeat a slogan.
Loneliness gets talked about in vague, alarming language. That helps nobody. So we gathered the strongest published figures we could find, from the World Health Organization, Gallup, the UK government, academic research and The Lancet, and we put them in one place with their sources attached.
Two promises about this page. First, we did not invent, round or stretch a single number, and if we cannot link the source, it is not here. Second, none of these are our numbers. The Tribe's own figures, how many Tribers there are and what has been contributed, live on the Glass Ledger, and they are honest even while they are small.
Loneliness is not a personal failing. It is happening everywhere.
The World Health Organization set up a Commission on Social Connection and published its findings in 2025. These are its figures.
- 1 in 6
people worldwide is affected by loneliness.
Not a fringe experience. Roughly one person in every six, in every region of the world.
Source: World Health Organization, “Social connection linked to improved health and reduced risk of early death”, 30 June 2025.
- 871,000
deaths a year are linked to loneliness, around 100 every hour.
The WHO links loneliness and social isolation to this many deaths annually. Connection is a health issue, not only a feelings issue.
Source: World Health Organization, Commission on Social Connection report launch, 30 June 2025.
- 24% vs 11%
About 24% of people in low-income countries reported feeling lonely, twice the rate in high-income countries at about 11%.
Loneliness is heaviest where life is hardest. It tracks with insecurity, not with wealth.
Source: World Health Organization, Commission on Social Connection report launch, 30 June 2025.
- 24%
of people aged 15 and over across 142 countries said they felt very or fairly lonely.
The loneliest group was not the oldest. It was young adults aged 19 to 29, at 27%, compared with 17% of people aged 65 and over.
Source: Ellyn Maese, Gallup, “Almost a Quarter of the World Feels Lonely”, on the Meta-Gallup State of Social Connections survey (fieldwork June 2022 to February 2023), 24 October 2023.
The official English numbers, and what they leave out.
These come from the Community and Engagement Survey, the government survey that replaced the Community Life Survey, covering England only, with over 175,000 responses.
- 7%
of people aged 16 and over said they felt lonely often or always.
Around one person in fourteen, carrying it most of the time. The figure was unchanged on the year before.
Source: Community and Engagement Survey 2025/26, loneliness report, fieldwork October 2025 to March 2026, published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, published 14 August 2026.
- 9%
reported high levels of indirect loneliness.
The indirect measure asks how often you lack companionship or feel left out, without using the word lonely. More people show up in it than admit to the word itself.
Source: Community and Engagement Survey 2025/26, loneliness report, published 14 August 2026.
- 9% vs 4%
9% of people aged 16 to 24 felt lonely often or always, against 4% of people aged 65 to 74.
The young are lonelier than the old, by the government's own measure. The story we tell ourselves about loneliness is the wrong way round.
Source: Community and Engagement Survey 2025/26, loneliness report, published 14 August 2026.
- 18%
volunteered formally at least once a month, and 31% at least once in the last year.
Most people never get the chance to be useful to someone else nearby. That is a supply problem as much as a willingness problem.
Source: Community and Engagement Survey 2025/26, volunteering and charitable giving report, published 14 August 2026.
Friendship did not disappear. It thinned out.
The clearest long-run measurement of adult friendship comes from the United States, comparing 1990 with 2021.
- 3% to 12%
The share of Americans saying they have no close friends at all rose from 3% in 1990 to 12% in 2021.
Four times as many people with nobody close, inside one generation.
Source: Daniel A. Cox, Survey Center on American Life, “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss”, 8 June 2021.
- 33% to 13%
The share reporting ten or more close friends fell from 33% in 1990 to 13% in 2021.
Wide circles became small ones. Nearly half, 49%, now report three close friends or fewer.
Source: Daniel A. Cox, Survey Center on American Life, “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss”, 8 June 2021.
- 3% to 15%
Among men, the share with no close friends rose from 3% in 1990 to 15% in 2021.
Men lost friendships fastest. In the same research, 21% of men said a friend had given them emotional support in the past week, against 41% of women.
Source: Daniel A. Cox, Survey Center on American Life, “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss”, 8 June 2021.
Anxiety about the future is now the normal condition, not the exception.
One of the largest studies of its kind surveyed 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 across ten countries: Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Portugal, the UK and the USA.
- 59%
of those young people were very or extremely worried about climate change, and 84% at least moderately worried.
Worry about the future is the majority experience for that generation, not a minority mood.
Source: Hickman et al., “Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey”, The Lancet Planetary Health, December 2021.
- more than 45%
said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.
This is not distant worry. It reaches into sleep, study, work and plans.
Source: Hickman et al., The Lancet Planetary Health, December 2021.
What these numbers do not say.
Statistics can be used to frighten people, and we do not want to do that. So, plainly: these surveys ask different questions, of different people, in different years, so they cannot be added together or compared like for like. Self-reported feelings are exactly that. And a rising number does not tell you the cause.
There is also good news buried in the same research. In the global Gallup work, 49% of people said they were not lonely at all. Loneliness is common, but it is not universal, and it is not permanent. It changes when circumstances change, which is the entire reason this place is being built.
Use these numbers. Quote any of them in an article, a talk, a funding bid or a school project. Please cite the original source rather than us, because the research belongs to the people who did it. If this page helped you find it, a link back is welcome, and never required.
Questions about these numbers.
Where do these numbers come from?
Every figure on this page comes from a named published source: the World Health Organization, Gallup, the UK government's Community and Engagement Survey, the Survey Center on American Life, and The Lancet Planetary Health. Each one is listed with its publication date and a direct link, so you can open the original and check it yourself. We do not use a number unless we have read it in the source it came from, and we do not round figures to make a point.
Are these The Tribe's own numbers?
No, and that distinction matters to us. These are other people's research about loneliness and belonging in the world. The Tribe's own numbers, how many members we have and what has been contributed, live separately on our Glass Ledger, and they are honest even when they are small. We will never mix the two to make ourselves look bigger than we are.
Can I use or quote these statistics?
Yes. Quote any of them, in an article, a funding bid, a talk, a school project or a council report. We would simply ask that you cite the original source rather than us, because the research belongs to the people who did it. If this page helped you find it, a link back to it is welcome but not required.
Why do different surveys give different loneliness figures?
Because they ask different questions of different people. A survey that asks whether you feel lonely often or always will always produce a smaller number than one that includes some of the time, and a survey of one country cannot be compared directly with a global one. That is why each figure here is shown with who asked, when, and where, instead of being blended into one headline number.
Does being alone mean being lonely?
No. Plenty of people live alone and feel well connected, and plenty of people feel deeply lonely in a full house or a busy office. Loneliness is the gap between the connection you have and the connection you want. That is why the answer is rarely just more people around you, and usually something closer to being known by a few.
A number is a person, repeated.
Behind every percentage on this page is someone who came home and had nobody to tell about their day. The Tribe is being built so that fewer people do. It is early, and we are honest about that, which is exactly why being one of the first matters.
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