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Do you live in a ‘lonelygenic environment’? Being in nature may help.
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Washington Post
Posted: July 24th, 2025
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2025/06/17/nature-re...
Loneliness has become a global public health concern. Countries including Britain and Japan have appointed “ministers of loneliness” to help tackle the problem. In the United States, then-Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued a public health advisory on loneliness, stating that the risk for premature death from loneliness is akin to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. What if, instead of trying to “fix” the individual, strategies focused on shaping the environment in a way that facilitates social connection? Recently, researchers have been trying to leverage nature as a way to bring people together and reduce negative feelings about social isolation. They say living in what is known as a “lonelygenic environment” — one dominated by cars and concrete instead of grass and trees — can cause or aggravate loneliness. Even if you live in a lonelygenic environment, experts say, spending just an hour or two in nature per week ... may help people feel less isolated. One proposed approach for tackling loneliness as a public health issue is through social prescribing, where physicians connect their patients with non-medical services in the community similar to how they prescribe medication. Nature comes in many forms. An ongoing study by [Matthew] Browning and his colleagues investigates the amount of time a representative sample of Americans spends outdoors in nature. “What we find is that nature is, for most people ... watching their kids play soccer outside or grilling in the backyard.”
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