Loneliness
Kurzgesagt
An examination of the modern loneliness epidemic — how industrialization and individualism dissolved the communities that kept us connected.
Why we picked this
Took two years to produce. Addresses the defining psychological challenge of our era with rare compassion and scientific rigor.
Loneliness is not just an emotion — it’s a public health crisis. Kurzgesagt traces the roots of modern isolation back through centuries of cultural change: industrialization broke apart extended families, urbanization scattered communities, and the ideology of individualism told us that self-sufficiency was a virtue.
The result is that more people than ever live alone, eat alone, and spend their evenings with screens instead of people. The biological consequences are staggering — chronic loneliness is as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
This video took the Kurzgesagt team two years to research and produce, and the care shows. It doesn’t moralize or prescribe. It explains how we got here and why it’s so hard to find our way back. The animation, as always, makes the complex feel approachable without ever simplifying it.