It’s Not Just You … Capitalism Isolates Us All

Laura Winham was 38 when she died in her apartment, after a short life marked by severe mental health struggles made worse by extreme loneliness. It wasn’t until more than three years after she died that her brother found her body, reportedly in a “mummified, almost skeletal state.”

Never before in human history has our species, innately social to its core, been so cruelly isolated as under modern capitalism.

Youth outlook for the future is so bleak that the US plummeted out of the top 20 in the 2024 World Happiness Report. Self-reported life evaluations for those 30 and under lagged more than 50 spots behind older generations. Reported loneliness among Millennials was nearly twice as high as for those born before 1965.

A lot of ink is spilled trying to get to the bottom of the “friendship recession” or the “loneliness epidemic,” but articles usually focus on secondary factors. Certainly, the pandemic and social media exacerbate the problem, but crumbling social infrastructure, stagnant wages, and spiraling inflation all play a role in shrinking our social circles. There exists a range of immediate causes, but the ultimate root of the profound social malaise is the senile decay of capitalism.

Humans are innately social creatures and social isolation has devastating effects on our physical health, including elevated risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and even a 32% higher risk of dying early from any cause. It’s not just a matter of individual happiness or subjective feelings of loneliness—social isolation refers to an objective lack of connection and time spent with others, and all the warning lights are flashing.

Time spent with friends has been cut in half over the last decade, and other forms of in-person socializing have been in decline for years, according to the American Time Use Survey. Since 2013, we have lost about four hours of socializing with friends and we’ve gained ten hours spent alone each week. There is no other time on record when Americans have spent so much time alone—we are living in an era of unprecedented social isolation.

The crisis weighs heaviest on the youth. A CDC survey covering the decade 2011–2021 revealed the disturbing effects on high school students. Students who reported having “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” so severe that they stopped doing daily activities rose from 28% to 42%. For female students, that figure was nearly 60%. Every time you pass a high school, bear in mind that two in ten of those students have seriously considered committing suicide, and one of those two has actually attempted it.

This did not begin with the pandemic; in fact, another government agency found that childhood anxiety rose 27% between 2016 and 2019. Children today grow up worrying about war, genocide, economic crisis, political polarization, mass shootings, and climate change. A ruling class that can no longer guarantee a future to the youth, but instead condemns them to doomscrolling, is no longer fit to rule.

The only solutions offered are how you can insulate yourself from society’s problems as an individual. But we don’t have to fight alone. Revolutionary theory provides us with clear explanations of where the problems come from and how to fight them. Only a successful revolution can end the isolation and alienation of capitalism, but this requires organizing all class-conscious fighters into a party that can win the working class to its program. This is the difference between a generation doomed by capitalism and a revolutionary generation that spells doom for capitalism.