or what i need to do, i think they may change the said director to our foot security. there are new this uses emerging. you past started talking the crops and making huge losses. this things are suddenly happening. and we are not prepared for this gene back inside the international rice research institute should offer help more than 100. 30000 varieties and sub varieties have been kept here. and for decades, they help the world cope with a change in climate before. and they're aiming to release new heat, told her on fridays by next year. barnaby low al, just 0. right. but you see here the philippines, the engineer, these are the top stories, which is prime minister wishes to not cause met us president joe biden at the white house, the war and ukraine. economic security and artificial intelligence were among the issues discussed by the lead is,

is due next 1st visit to the white house since taking office. millions of people across north america have been advised to wear high grade faced mosques outdoors because of smoke from intense wild fires in canada. lots have been delayed in parts of the us because of the pollution because of scorched 3800000 hectares and force 220000 people from the homes. roughly a 155 are active in the province of quebec cologne. hello cindy lee is a canadian reporter covering the 5. and when it comes to the severity and, and how many fires that we are seeing and come back and in canada, officials say that it is unprecedented, that they have never seen so many flyers with this severity at this point of the season. it's, it's only june, 8th, after all, and summer hasn't even officially arrived yet. right now, there are about 800 firefighters on the ground, badly, the 130, the 140 fires in come back,

and there is more help on the way or thoughts or shunning, continuing in the house own region, despite the funding caused by the attack on the no, because could um, ukraine and russia accuse each other of humphrey efforts to evacuate people, emergency teams, a searching areas flooded down to them was breached on tuesday. for children were injured in the knife attack in france. happened in the town of, i'm seeing the border with switzerland. 2 adults were also injured. the youngest victim is just 22 months old. you're tacos, a syrian refugee who wasn't known to authorities administered on the army and the records support forces that battling for control of a lodge weapons factory and southern how to disclose a major fire at a nearby fuel depot. the foreign ministry group says it's inside the facility, but the only claims fighting is still ongoing. headlines to stay with us here and i'll just say where the stream is up next, i'll be about with one use straight after that. i've enough for

a week to look at the world's top business store. thousands of people go on strike, have had high hopes of living from global markets in a small business in the tech support restrictions really impacted to understand how it affects counseling, the costs, which is 0. the . so today i want to talk about something millions of people can relate to and that is the i have no friends trends. i'm 2016 years old and i don't have any friends. issues is slow, leak all the time. and i've been a little so terrified over the link to i really me, i'm going to be alone. i thought to myself, hey, you know, like when you get to this age,

you just don't have friends anymore. and it's kind of a hard realization to come to, but it just seem normal. no one wants to go online to mix the rest of the while, but they have my friends. it's kind of embarrassing and to be honest, is something i've heard lots of shame a but it's something i've tried to hide in my realize that's just a sample of what some people on social media are confessing to that they have no friends. hi, and welcome to the stream where we are old friends. and i'm heidi joe castro. today the loneliness crisis. technology has allow people to connect in more ways than ever, but loneliness is on the rise. we'll look at why public health experts the leaves. the problem has reached epidemic levels the with us to talk about loneliness in the us state of utah. julian, hold on stat, professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the social connection and health lab at brigham young university in the state of washington. lucy of my,

he's weinberg director of the university of washington international adolescent connection and technology laboratory. and in london, harry hobson, founder and director of the neighborly lab. and since we're talking about human connections today, here is your chance to connect with us. please jump into our you to chat with your questions and your thoughts. guess thank you so much for joining us for this important discussion. i want to start with you, harry. the loneliness we just saw displayed on those social media clips. is that hype is that just something more people are talking about, or is this a real problem? hi id. um, it's a better face. it's, it's, it's a very real thing. i'm based in london, according to surveys, hair about 8 percent of the population as about 700000 people say that that always officer lady. so that's about 700000 people just to just to say, wow, so it's a big real settings to be able to do that. there's no doubts about that. um

certainly, uh, the way it's been expressed by the young people. we just sort of that, that it shows that he actually said people speaking, not much more about sets of people. are they much more open and frank about it, which i'm sure is a good thing. yeah, that's certainly the 1st step. you talked about the u. k. in the us, there is specific evidence of loneliness as a pandemic. julianne you were the lead scientific editor of a recently published us surgeon general advisory, which i have here on my computer. it's titled our epidemic of loneliness and isolation. and further down, it says that lacking social connection is as dangerous as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. and if and if and if found that poor social connections is linked to real health outcomes like heart disease, stroke the, the risk of developing dementia. julian, just how serious are these warnings?

yeah, so you know, when we take both the trends of significant portions of population that are lacking, connection in, in one way or, or even multiple ways along with the serious kinds of health consequences and the implications for public health are tremendous. um, i'll just give you an example of loneliness increases risk for earlier death by 26 percent. so social isolation by 29 percent living alone by 32 percent to but the good news is that those who are more socially connected have an increase of the survival by 50 percent. and so what we know is that humans are our social beings. we're, we're, this is thought to be a fundamental human need to connect. and so it's not surprising that when we

lack this connection that have significant impacts on, on our body or physiology that ultimately lead to some of these poor health outcomes. yeah. we'll see a, the pandemic, of course, aggravated this. can you tell me what that impact was? there? it's only i'm, i focus especially in young people, out of lessons between the ages of 10 now to 2425. and unfortunately, what many of us have felt during the thunder make is rebuilding the date. the we're seeing increases in only mazda increases in levels of social connectedness and social support and young people. and, and we are also saying social media as definitely a lifeline that allowed us to stay connected in the face of the lack of in person interactions, the closure of schools. mm hm. so definitely a problem that we were seeing before. let them make that has definitely been

confounded and that should have gather oh for attention. yeah, i'm glad you brought up young people, but adults 2 are experiencing those. and we also have some numbers to support that . on my computer, i have a report from forbes health that sound 59 percent of us adults find it harder to form relationships. since coven, and when asked, what are you most nervous about when socializing? well, the, the, the most number of people 29 percent said not knowing what to say or how to interact. then. is it a simplification to say that this pandemic, basically helped us, or allowed us to forget how to socialize? hi, um, hi, uh, i do. yeah. i got a couple of quick things um, just testable. i just want to, um, have a quick thoughts about kind of from my point of view, kind of what learning is like. um it's cuz i think i completely welcome this,

this amazing reports. i'm research in general. how about equally i think it's important up to kind of a thought to try is that, you know, so i think it is an old re, everyday parts of life for all of us at different times in our lights. and i don't think it's this thing particularly for the young or for the old. i think it's any of us can become so very lovely. and it's particularly at times of change or transition or disjunction, when, when life becomes really difficult, really starting today. and especially when you don't have a people around you, so you're used to having to support you. so that can be people to big changes going on in the lives. people have moving to a new place. and it's particularly for people who a sudden go or live alone, who, who are particularly kind of susceptible to submit learning this. thank you so i just think it's kind of important to realize it's not about it. we used to think of it as a thing, especially for older people will reset vegas lots of attention on young people. but actually, i think it's best about age and more about like stuck themselves so that they will

be able to think about that. and i'll just jump in. um i, i couldn't agree more. um, you know, as i mentioned, that a social connection is a fundamental human need. and so it's part of the human experience and you know it's, it's much like hunger and thirst and, and know it's just biological drive to help us motivate us to reconnect socially, to meet this biological need. and so it's perfectly natural and part of the human experience to feel loneliness from time to time. but when people get stuck in it, and it because persistent and severe over time, is when we often feel or see some of these severe kinds of effects. but i'm jumping back to, to the video and, and what you just mentioned, um, i also recently saw some data that showed that google searches on, on how to make friends are at a 20 year high. wow. wow. and so, you know,

it, i think it really shows that not only are people you know hungry, so to speak, to connect, but are also feeling like maybe they don't have the adequate tools in order to do so. yeah, lucy, i wanted to have you talk a little bit too about your research in latin america, because we certainly don't want to make it seem like this. loneliness problem is just the global north, but in fact, gallup research did a as an estimate. that in 2021, it found more than 300000000 people globally. don't have a single friend who see it. how have you seen that playing out in latin america? both serious and we, i think it is a global trend that we're seeing. i think there's differences in culture that might then for some of these effect left in america in general it tends to be more

collectivistic farming area. and that societies where i think there might be some protective factors that we're seeing play out. mm. to me and 11 thing that i do want to bring up is that in studying other lessons, we in development talk about sensitive periods. right? so very early in life, it's a key sensitive period to learn to speak a language, for example. and we now know that the lesson is a key sensitive period for learning how to build relationships have to foster them . so i will worry about the fact of, of many children a lesson who left school for 2 years lived in america, for example, had in countries i worked with all full 2 years over many of the education where kids have not been able to practice their skills because their skills can be learned can be taught and should be practice. so it's not surprising to me that young people are asking online, how do i make friends that they're insuring thursday of how to know socialize and

interact? i think it's a concern that we're hearing from our undergraduate students as well coming back so . so that's going to be very much thinking of how we can scaffold and support these skills and social emotional learning in young people and for everyone, right. it's a skill that we can all learn and practice. and it's interesting that these queries are being asked on google technology here. it has helped us and perhaps it has made us more lonely in some ways that as a point of debate among researchers. let's hear from susan mat, a history professor at web or state university. i run a place which technologies may actually make our loneliness works. a psychologist, leticia, and pep out of u. c. l, a. in the 1980 suggested that loneliness was the feeling when experienced when you have an expectation of so many friends and the reality of a fewer number. so it's the gap between how many you want to have and how many you

actually have. social media encourages police that you can have an incident number of friends. and it's that believe and that inability to ever rise up as high as one and the number of friends that may heighten our experience of loneliness. harry, i think there's a, uh, a tendency in social media to make us think that we need constant social affirmation that might not be such a good thing. no, yes. right. i think that's 2 reasons why social media kind of has this effects, if you will, that makes conceptual comparison. in other words, advising us to compare ourselves often on favorably with people. and the reason why god has had such a harsh effects on us and especially perhaps that for teenagers, as we set aside is part is for 2 reasons. first of all, the stuff that people post on line is that you felt that obviously people, if you go into instagram facebook, what you seem to see is everybody having a break in time. everybody was that friends, everybody. the thing busy looking spiny. so that's bound to give people

a sense of kind of negative self perception by comparison. and then i think another reason is got the times when we perhaps go too far down that route. the code of social media are specific you times movements in your day or your life. when you are on your right may stay on top of it down a bit like moods. and feel particularly kind of susceptible to valuable to the effects about kind of hard to keep social comparison. yeah, so that's why um social media can help us kind of ready pernicious effects, i think. yeah. and particularly of young people, go ahead lucy. and i think it's very important that we actually measure and know what people are doing on social media because i think we have for a long time just focus an hours in front of a screen, which is not a great characterization of what we're doing online or if i'm spending 30 minutes on a website goal with my very close friends that is going to really build towards this meaningful connections, right?

but if i'm just passing the scrolling through instagram, for example, without interacting with friends, just comparing myself to others, then that is going to have negative impacts and loneliness. and that's exactly what we're finding in our own research, right? when we're measuring false anyone line experiences that actually associates with less loneliness compared to when we measure negative one line experiences which relates to higher levels of loneliness. yeah. it's certainly not that simple, right. so there are so many different types. go ahead, julian, i was just going to add because of course, you know, i fully agree that we need to pay attention to how time is used. but i also think we shouldn't entirely dismissive because many of these tools are designed specifically to keep our attention. um and, and, and so we have to think about, to what extent is this displacing other valued activities, including things like interacting with others in person. and so, um, you know,

it becomes incredibly complex, of course. uh, but, but something we shouldn't neglect to consider. absolutely. and on that now, perhaps taking this to uh, further extreme, the role of artificial intelligence. i can artificial intelligence actually replace the void of no friends. i mean, it might seem like a silly question, but some people have, i tried to turn to a i, when they feel only for, and one example in japan, the sale of robot pets boomed during the pandemic. of course, this was during the walk down and, and this help people i hear you. i mean they, they're very cute uh these, uh, well, i live around this. yeah. me so, but yeah, but i, i probably shouldn't be my only friend should it. and probably not, not as, um i um yes, i mean it's, it's funny saying these robots and, um,

in some ways you can think of them is existing on a continuum through from dogs and companion audibles that we've always had um, through to toys that we perhaps have in childhood as companions, and these kind of things are almost more like toys. i'd say that and i always voice or some kind of mix it based on. yeah, i mean i'm, i'm, i think i have a do a festival that's just be completely can. there's no substitute the human interaction. so social connect to some is about interaction between people. yeah, i'm sorry i'm assume which isn't is not that is is, is something less than good session with contacts of course. yeah. but having said god, so you can see rhodes, right? i was kind of hoping people build that confidence helping people give a sense of belonging perhaps. um, i don't say perhaps most usefully letting people get help in a really quick and customize way. yeah. in a way to set top thoughts already what, what on websites and things like that? there's a good answer, pretty positive roads. yes,

there is one example i wanted to bring up. it's from a california based startup called replica. and this company has an app that lets you design your personal a i friend, that's how it's marketed. let's watch this promo a video. so you're the person, you know, you create your avatar. um, but then of course, this is just a, a promo video. so this doesn't happen in the user's experience, but look they're, they're saying it's almost. d like having your real robot friends pop up next to you in your living room, doing yoga with you, etc. this video, of course, it's not what people experience, but when i went to this company's website under popular questions, one was, is a replica essentially. and i mean the fact that people are asking perhaps means that they are confused julia. and what is the danger in this as well? so our connections to others for feel a variety of, of needs and, and roles and goals. and so, you know,

we ought to be careful about thinking about what kinds of rules that, that a, i might do quite well. um and where it either might fall short or even, you know, cause harm. um, what are the things that we know can have a benefit um, in terms of, of our human connection. uh the, the at least currently in the technology. um we don't have a good substitute for is, is actual human touch. and not only is there a wide literature on the importance of human touch from you know, various narrow peptides to got micro biome. um, but you can just anecdotally, we can think about even during the pandemic, how much we craved to just be, you know, be able to hug someone. yeah. be able to hold someone's hand. and you know,

as much as perhaps talking to others on, you know, on the some video chat, it was just a poor substitute to come out. and so those are some of the areas where we just aren't, it's not going to completely rep, replace human content. now, but it's a little bit better than nothing. and we have a lot of people saying that in our youtube chat, david brighton says i moved to a new city after the lock down and retired. i found a group of friends, a community on youtube, live streams. it's been nice and david, it's been nice to have you to, i'm glad you're joining this conversation. but it's that it's like what we're saying before, right? it's not just passively scrolling through things and ingesting content, but he and others are actually interacting in a part of a community. i think that's why i wanted to say it was like the got guy david's on your youtube. he's getting some of what he needs from, from his youtube friends i. d b as a student said, you know,

we'll keep in contact with tax included is, is if you like the kind of goes down to, that's what we'll need from crazy. but we can get lots of what we need, remote need, 3 tac through conversations that we have on the comments on, on the phone or on. what's apple? oh, by $60.00 and chat rooms. and by getting to know our neighbors through tech groups and so on. so there's no doubt that tech taser really, really helpful road in helping us connect. but it's part of the car system of house the connection. i did contact you and the thing. yeah, we'll see what should we go ahead? oh, sorry. yeah. to, to jump in. kyra. completely agree. yeah. one of the interesting, my love right now is this idea of online only friendship. right. so it seems to me, but when i was growing up, when i was a teenager, i turned to the beginning of social media to foster relationships that i already had. but now more and more, we're documenting these online only friends, which might be young people living and everything. city people we might never meet

online. so enters, enters in our studies, for example, 3040 percent of early other lessons already told me i have a person, i have a friend of mine that i have never and will never meet in person. and we're trying to characterize these types of friendships as 1st of all burying rios for young apple where of course, it's very or, and you may tell, but of course it's not those similar levels of closeness or trust. yeah, but a very important sources of shared interests where young people can explore interest with people that they might not have locally. we think it might even particularly import them for marginalize youth who might not find community locally . so really paying attention starting to scratch the surface to understand how these online, on differentiates, might look like. i want to also talk about some offline solutions at a global health level. japan and the u. k. both created ministries of loneliness in 2021. harry. what does the,

what does the case administer of loneliness do and how is it helping? oh, that's a tough one. i think in time, so i'm in step 90. this was the idea of about some 201617. no one's quite sure. if we still got, i don't know. okay. some is he thought he just say something like that kind of stuff happens. just say boston our government is out. yeah. but what about the, what the, how do you solve that would have it. yeah. i was gonna say serious, i mean city man is that keeps on is especially a matter of london. i accident thinking hard about the section infrastructure, in other words, pushing the stuff in place that it's um and we can the environments in which we live our lives to help us connect and that spot. we have neighbors that david walk on, particularly um, but certainly governments and city time does have a big role to play and making sure that we have the right kind of streets the right kind of housing. the right kind of parks are right kind of public space is the media to use to help us connect. yeah, yeah,

definitely. i wanted to bring one last, uh, uh, example from the netherlands and there's a tweet about this on my laptop in which the dutch government created slow checkout lanes at a popular grocery chain. and this is for people who want to chat doesn't really care about getting out of there as efficiently as possible. so you get at least a few minutes to face to face time with someone who would like to chat back with them. and it's the small things, right, that do make a difference. and so in our final minutes of this show, i want to ask you guys for things that we and our viewers can do to personally help ourselves help our families and our friends who are experiencing this loneliness. so if each or you can just in one sentence, tell our viewers directly what is one action they can take to day to help themselves feel less lonely julianne? go ahead and i guess in one sentence, that's gonna be tough, but i would say reach out to others. we've found in research that

just even small acts of kindness can, can uh, not only impact your own. loneliness reduce that loneliness but help you feel more connected to others and those in your community, reduce conflict and, and help others along the way. thank you, julian. lucy, yes. very much. i know a lot of people are anxious about reconnecting socially, but it does get easier, the more you do it. so it just starts small. i hope they send that message that you wanted to send, you know, a friend ask someone a question on the street. it gets easier with practice. thank you. inherent your last sentence of advice or? yeah. level, especially the kind of people do a new and that's a nice you to come those particularly the cost for people who are 2nd go to account for people. you've got no such items going on and i live close to the people that most likely to, to need your friendship. thank you guys so much. that is all great advice and for our viewers at home. thank you for watching today. if there's one thing you can do

after the show, call a friend, call family member, and thank you so much for watching the stream, the the with, along with, with either side willing to negotiate because the ukraine war becoming a forever war is america's global leadership. increasingly fragile. what will us politics look like as we headed the presidential election of 2024. quizzical look,

us politics, the bottom line, basically out of teams. does the un fits the purpose of like many critics sites just pump solutions doesn't get anywhere near enough done to the amount of money that is put into a hard hitting into abuse. do you think that to the lines of washington enough for money to go on its own and to build its on thoughts providing on for centuries, people have been taken care of are. so i have every confidence that future generations will do it as well via the story on told to how does era the the done by pushing the

01 to blow by the perspectives, the learn tighter and on the top stories on how to 0 british prime minister wishes to not cause met to use president joe biden at the white house, the war and ukraine. economic security and artificial intelligence were among the issues discussed by the latest fits your next 1st visit to the white house since taking office. early this week, we mark the 79th anniversary day and time to remind her of a proud history of our nation share. in the values,

values that we have long stood together that actually unshakable the foundation of this special relationship is this.