The Crowded Wilderness

The Story

We are dying of loneliness in the most connected era in human history. Sixty percent of American adults report feeling lonely. Generation Z—the first generation to grow up entirely in the smartphone era—reports the highest levels of loneliness ever recorded. These digital natives, who have more 'friends' and 'followers' and 'connections' than any generation in history, are also the loneliest generation in history. The text came at 2:47 AM. I was awake anyway—sleepless for the third night that week, scrolling through the infinite feed of other people's curated lives. The phone buzzed, and I expected another notification, another algorithmic suggestion, another advertisement disguised as content. Instead, it was a message from my neighbor. Not my social media 'friend' with 2,000 followers. My actual neighbor. The man who lived forty feet from my front door, whose name I'd learned only three months prior despite living next to him for four years. 'My wife left tonight. Kids are asleep. I don't know who else to text.' I stared at those words, and something cracked open inside me. This man—this stranger who shared a property line with me—had no one else to reach out to at the darkest moment of his life.