How to use design thinking to make new friends | Jenn Maer | TEDxAsheville

0:07 – 3:47

The Loneliness Epidemic Has a Body Count

Jenn Maer stood at parties holding a drink, frozen in the corner, hoping someone would talk to her. This wasn't high school awkwardness. This was a 2,500-mile gap between her and the people she could text about mysterious rashes or call when her dog died. She'd moved from Oakland to Asheville during the pandemic, found a dentist and dog sitter, but not her people. The kind who sit on porches talking about nothing. The kind whose absence felt like it might kill her. Turns out that wasn't hyperbole. In 2023, the US Surgeon General published a report on loneliness with staggering numbers: poor social connection carries physical consequences as severe as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness can literally kill you. But the report told her nothing about how to survive the epidemic. It didn't explain how to actually make friends when you work from home, move every few years, and lose 50% of your friends every seven years through moves, fallouts, and death. Research shows it takes 100 hours to make a friend and 200-plus hours for an intimate one. Do the math: if you're not consistently making friends, you risk ending up very, very lonely.