The shelf · Loneliness and solitude
Does The Lonely American hold up?
The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century, by Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz (2009)
Two psychiatrists argue that Americans are becoming more isolated and that the stigma of loneliness makes it worse.
The short answer
Its most cited figure is disputed: the 2004 survey behind it is now thought to overstate isolation.
The claims, checked
In 2004, one in four Americans talked to no one about something important to them.
Contested Claude Fischer argued the jump was largely a survey artefact. The original authors accepted that the 2004 data overstate isolation while maintaining some decline.
A quarter of US households are one person, and more people live alone than ever before.
Outdated The direction holds and the counts keep setting records: 29% of households, 39.7 million, in 2025.
Evidence: US Census Bureau, 2025