Loneliness is toxic; healthy relationships are key to physical and mental health

We're in the midst of a loneliness epidemic. At Kin_e we want to help people feel like they have a community supporting them. We want to provide an easy, safe way to make friends and for people to feel connected and to feel they belong. Robert Waldinger's TED talk is a great way to hear about a study done at Harvard following people through the course of their lives. The biggest factor in their happiness and health outcomes was the quality of relationships in their lives. How connected they felt. [This survey has now been extended to include the wives and to include their children]. The participants were also all asked when they were closer to death, what were their proudest moments and what were their regrets. All of the answers were about relationships (women also wished they'd spent less time worrying about what other people thought...).

Robert Waldinger's Ted Talk on the importance of relationships

The Harvard Study of Adult Development may be the longest study of adult life that's ever been done. For 75 years, they tracked the lives of 724 men, year after year, asking about their work, their home lives, their health, and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories were going to turn out. There were two groups: students at Harvard College who graduated during World War II and a group of boys from Boston's poorest neighbourhoods. The study came to three conclusions. The first is that social connections are really good for us, and that loneliness kills. The second is that it's not just the number of friends you have, but the quality of your close relationships that matters And the third is that good relationships don't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains.

https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare