Briefing note

The evidence

Every figure below is published, dated and attributed. Loric makes no claim beyond them.

• 1 in 6

  people worldwide are affected by social disconnection.

  WHO Commission on Social Connection, From Loneliness to Social Connection, June 2025

• 871,000

  deaths a year are linked to social disconnection — around 100 every hour.

  WHO Commission on Social Connection, June 2025

• May 2025

  the first World Health Assembly resolution on social connection was adopted.

  World Health Assembly resolution WHA78, May 2025

• 50 · 90 · 200

  approximate hours of shared time associated with becoming familiar, becoming friends, and becoming close.

  Hall, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2019

• 0.5%

  of relationship satisfaction was accounted for by similarity between partners' personalities, across samples of more than 23,000 people.

  Finkel et al., Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2012

• No signal

  machine learning could estimate how selective and how sought-after a person was, but not which two people would get on in person.

  Joel, Eastwick and Finkel, Psychological Science, 2017

The Commission placed social health in the same tier of risk as air pollution, tobacco and alcohol, and concluded that social connection should be treated as a third pillar of health alongside physical and mental.