What the Center is, and what it is not

The Center for Social Connection is an independent editorial project. It reviews, summarises, and analyses published research on social connection, social isolation, and loneliness, and makes that literature easier to navigate for people who have to act on it.

What we publish

Three things. Evidence reviews that summarise what a body of research collectively establishes, including where findings conflict.Data analysis that puts published survey figures in context across sources and over time. And policy briefs that trace how governments and health systems have responded.

What we do not do

We do not conduct primary research. We run no surveys, collect no participant data, and generate no original datasets. Every quantitative claim on this site traces to a study or survey someone else conducted and published, and the source is named and linked.

Nothing here is medical advice. Loneliness and isolation are associated with serious health outcomes, but an association measured across a population does not tell any individual what is happening to them or what to do about it.

How we source

Every article is written against a fixed citation library rather than from memory. Each entry in that library records the document's publisher, its publication date, its URL, and the specific findings we rely on. The library currently holds 87 entries, of which 17 have been checked directly against the published document; the earliest dates from 1989.

An article may only cite sources published on or before its own publication date. This is enforced mechanically, not editorially — the constraint is applied when the piece is written and checked again before it is published, so an article cannot come to rest on evidence that did not exist when it was written.

We distinguish a source's publication date from the date of the data it reports. A federal surveillance report published in 2024 describing 2022 survey data is a 2024 source, and we treat it as one.

Corrections

If something here is wrong — a misread finding, a broken link, a figure attributed to the wrong study — we want to know. Write tocontact@centerforsocialconnection.org.

Bylines

Articles are published under the Center's name rather than individual bylines. The work is editorial synthesis of other people's research, and attributing it to the organisation rather than to a named author is the honest description of what it is.