Oral Content
Topic: Loneliness increase amongst U.S. millennials
Purpose: Describe and inform of the dangers relating to increases in loneliness
Thesis Statement: The increase in loneliness among U.S. millennials has serious and adverse effects relating to our society’s mental health, prosperity, and development.
Introduction
Attention Strategy/Orienting Material:
If I were to ask you “what percentage of people do you think report feeling lonely in the U.S.,” what would you say? 10%? 20%? Maybe 40% at the most. As it turns out, over three-fifths, 61% of U.S. adults reported feeling lonely. If that statistic could apply to every U.S. adult, over 127 million of the current 209 million U.S. adult population, would report feeling lonely. That percentage is even higher for U.S. millennials at a staggering 71%, or 51 million of the current 72.1 million U.S. millennial population. All of this is from a study conducted by Cigna in 2019. We are in the midst of a loneliness epidemic.
It hasn’t always been like this. According to a separate study, in 2010, 35% of U.S. adults aged over 45 were lonely. Another survey done in 2010 including 8th, 10th, and 12th-graders, who are now millennials, showed that the percentage of them who often feel lonely sits at 23%. We can definitely see that there has been a sharp increase in loneliness over the past decade, but what does the increase imply for the rest of our country? Is loneliness a serious mental illness with detrimental side effects, or is it simply a state of being that most people can easily overcome?
Body
- Main Idea – Loneliness is not a state of being, but a more complex state of mind.
- Support – Loneliness causes people to feel empty, alone, and unwanted. People who are lonely often crave human contact, but their state of mind makes it more difficult to form connections with other people.
- Support – For example, you could be surrounded by your family and friends on your birthday, but still may feel lonely due to the satisfaction that you are not receiving from others.
- Main Idea – Loneliness is a serious chronic mental illness that has detrimental side effects.
- Support – Researchers have discovered that lower levels of loneliness were correlated with high incomes, high education status, and higher rates of marriage.
- Main Idea – Despite all the disagreements surrounding the origin of the shift and the shift’s main causes, most experts agree that the increase in loneliness among U.S. millennials will have adverse effects such as a decrease in productivity.
- Support – According to one study, people who are lonely are worse at communicating with others and even perceive positive social interactions as negative ones. Communication plays a vital role in human life since it “helps to facilitate the process of sharing information and knowledge with others, but also helps people to develop relationships with others.” The ability to share information, knowledge, and develop relationships with others are some of the key factors that lead to progression in areas such as technology, politics, and science and a successful/thriving society. Without these abilities, our society is not able to succeed and flourish in areas that matter.
Conclusion
Concluding Remark: Will loneliness be the force that brings down humanity? Probably not. But, if loneliness continues to increase at the same rate, we will be in trouble. Thankfully, there are actions that can be done to help slow down the increase and hopefully even reverse it, and we already seeing some of these actions taking place. On Instagram, social media influencers and celebrities are helping to spread mental health awareness and support the idea of reaching out to those with mental illnesses, so we can better understand them. During President Obama’s last term, the mental health reform was passed, which increased access to mental health care and introduced many other benefits. With constant advancements in technology and science, we are better able to understand mental illnesses and care for them. Now, that doesn’t mean we should just sit back and let the authorities and scientists handle this. There are things that you can do right now to help fight this loneliness epidemic. One of the biggest things you can do and it’s what lonely people crave the most, is for you just to talk to them and understand how they’re feeling. And if you’ve been feeling lonely lately, then you should also try to seek help. A lot of people are in the same situation as you and you’re not alone. At many times it might feel as though the world is falling apart with issues such as polarization in politics, climate change, racial injustice, and mental illness, but humanity has dealt with threatening issues before, and we will deal with them again.
Sources
https://www.verywellmind.com/loneliness-causes-effects-and-treatments-2795749