What do the loneliness epidemic, falling rates of adolescent drinking and dating, and worsening mental health among teenagers and young adults have in common?
For starters, two of them are disputed to some degree. The paucity of solid historical data on loneliness has led some to question whether there has been any rise at all, let alone an epidemic. And on young adult mental health, some argue that a significant portion of the observed increase in problems is simply picking up cases that would previously have gone undiagnosed, while others point to misleading statistics.
Sceptics are not wrong to raise doubts, and there has almost certainly been a degree of overstatement. But as time passes and both data and testimony mount, there is growing acknowledgment that the absence of concrete causal evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Indeed there is an increasing sense that these phenomena may not only be real, but all part of the same wider shift: plummeting in-person socialising among young people.