Loneliness is a growing problem. It's time we started talking to each other

Big Issue’s survey on social interactions throws up many findings. Social connection is really fraying across the country. In any given week, more than 40% of people don’t have any real interactions with people they don’t know. And over half the time, our colleagues who sell Big Issue to make a living are being ignored.

This is not a surprise. The desiccation of human interaction has been a reality for some time. Polling continues to show that increasingly people are more comfortable with digital communication than with real life. According to YouGov last year, 38% of people across the world prefer digital. A 2021 poll by Natterhub – an online safety platform – found that only 23% of kids from 5-11 years old preferred in person to digital. Admittedly, this was in the teeth of Covid, so