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I’m highly skeptical. There’s only one piece of data cited in the article. In that data, the only mention of a possible trend is this

> shows that loneliness is worse in each successive generation.

Basically if you read the linked to report, the data show older people are less lonely than younger people right now. That’s not the same as showing loneliness increasing over time. There are many plausible reasons for younger people to be lonelier... it’s just as likely younger groups are always lonely and lose loneliness as they age.

The rest of the article talks about partisanship, which is a different issue entirely. Indeed as we sort ourselves into ideologically similar communities I might expect loneliness to decrease.

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Social institutions started falling down once TV appeared and was demanding of attention. You had to be around at 8pm on Tuesday to see your show.

Now with phones we have even bigger attention sinks.

End of the day, the rise of cheap entertainment and the long decline of mainline religious organizations, erosion of ethnic organizations, etc have led to a lot of social problems. There was an article a few weeks ago suggesting that even romantic relationships are having problems as people have trouble with social contact and apps have made sex on demand a thing.

In a grant-funded and eyeball driven world, science and media have perverse incentives to cherry-pick data to show trends that don't really exist.

You live long enough, you get skeptical of 'sky is falling' narratives...

Have you read "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam? It's a tad outdated, but describing the same trends of growing loneliness and isolation. And sure enough, the author concluded that television was a factor (though not the primary factor.)

The book makes its case through data. Lots of clear charts and a great appendix at the end. The author spends a lot of time discussing his methodology and potential problems with it.

I tend to be skeptical, like you are, of "sky is falling" research coming from academia. Especially when the conclusion is that TV is bad for us (Sounds like my nagging parents trying to get me to play in the back yard!). But after reading this book, I'm stumped. I can't say the author is cherry picking the data. Surely there are limitations to the research, and the book is upfront about them. No, there is definitely something going on. The research makes that clear. And electronic media is likely a part of the explanation.

Really simple things like counting how many people folks talk to in a 30 day period can illustrate the bigger point. It’s a real problem.

>Couldn’t it be that younger people are always lonelier than older generations?

The article doesn't merely say that "younger people are lonelier than older generations", but that successive generations are lonelier than those previously...

If you click through to the underlying report, it shows loneliness rates by generation groupings as of right now. So what is a Gen Zer experiencing with loneliness now. What is a baby boomer experiencing.

It doesn’t show what age groups reported 10 or 20 years ago with with same survey.

So the data shows at this instant younger people are lonelier. But that may have always been true.