Solving The Loneliness Crisis with Technology

Humans are getting more detached from each other and more lonely. What can we do?

Erik Engheim
12 min readMar 17, 2024

This story will be about reimagining smartphones and our whole approach to technology to tackle the loneliness crisis.

There is a lot of talk about lonely young men today, but they are not alone. There are also more lonely young women than before. As a parent, I have seen how the current generation is evolving in a very different way from my own.

It feels ironic to be of the first generation of home computer users, with parents always telling me to go outside and always hearing stories about “back in my day.” No doubt, my parents spent a lot more time outside and roamed around more than I did. Interestingly, there is a map that made the rounds on Reddit (discussion forum) some years ago comparing four generations of Brits and how far their children could roam.

What we see is a trend. I may have moved less around than my parents, but I was still a lot more around and about than my kids. I used to roam around an abandoned shipyard, or walk up to a bomb shelter in the maintain side.

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Erik Engheim
Erik Engheim

Written by Erik Engheim

Geek dad, living in Oslo, Norway with passion for UX, Julia programming, science, teaching, reading and writing.