Description:

A dashboard using Zoho Analytics provides a very recent and strong snapshot (2025-2026) of how social connection and loneliness is currently affecting ourselves, our communities, and friends on the other side of the globe. This data uses a Social Connectedness Index dataset created by Bailey et al. (2018) and has been updated for 2026. The data provides global relevance as well as more granular subsets. For this dashboard, I’m using US State and County locations only. As for US loneliness estimates, these were provided from the CDC’s datasets. In the future, I’ll be doing more work on statistical modeling for this topic. Before I tip my hat to you as I head out, kindness and care where and when we can is important. Reach out to you and yours–and those around you.

Background:

In 2023, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared Loneliness and Social Isolation as a public health crisis.¹ The 2023 published advisory report was a collaboration from over 50 subject matter experts from various areas of health, academia, government, education, and other social sectors. Numerous studies have shown the harmful effects of social isolation and loneliness. It increases risk of mental and physical illness, in addition to, elevating risks on premature death. Unfortunately, only 39% of individuals feel like they’re connected to others.¹ The importance of this work provides insights for an early look and understanding of the connections between people, place, and systems for loneliness.

Dashboard Info:

The navigation tabs at the top of the dashboard allow users to go to specific screens. Some of tabs have filters to customize what data you may want to view. A lot of dashboard software and tools have differing levels of customization and functions available for considering accessibility (vision, audio, and language). Some are better than others altogether and my hope is to release more content that will be much more accessible than what I currently have. Additionally, some of the released content may be geared for specific audiences that are not general community members and my hope is to have more community-informed feedback as time progresses to tailor these accordingly with context, stories, and functionality.

Interactivity:

1). You can reset your dashboard view to default at anytime by pressing the refresh icon on the upper right-hand corner.

2). If you hover at the top-right corner of each chart there is a settings bar that allows you to customize a few things. Some of the chart figures and visualizations can be expanded for better viewing. There’s also sorting of data elements in the chart (e.g., ascending or descending order). Lastly, you can change the chart type into your visualization of choice. Play around and see what you like best.

3). For the Social Connection tab, the filter for county probabilities will require you to have at least two counties before there’s enough data to determine geographic location estimates. The default for all filters is “All.”

Revision History:

V1.0 – Initial Release – Current: 5.8.26

References:

[1] HHS. (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. Surgeon General Social Connection Advisory.