Harvard Graduate School of Education – Researchers share what Americans have to say about social disconnection and potential solutions – “U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy placed a spotlight on America’s problem with loneliness when he declared the issue an epidemic last year. Murthy explained, in a letter that introduced an urgent advisory, that loneliness is far more than “just a bad feeling” and represents a major public health risk for both individuals and society. Murthy also pointed out that, although many people grew lonelier during the COVID-19 pandemic, about half of American adults had already reported experiences of loneliness even before the outbreak.  Over the past four years, researchers with Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Making Caring Common (MCC) project have been investigating the underlying causes of loneliness and in May they conducted a national survey with the company YouGov to find out what Americans had to say about the problem as well as the types of solutions they supported. Here are some of the findings from the survey which are explained in MCC’s new report, Loneliness in America: Just the Tip of the Iceberg, authored by Milena Batanova, Richard Weissbourd, and Joseph McIntyre…”