Loneliness and India are probably not two things one would connect in relation to each other. Putting the sheer size of the country’s population aside, our country’s culture hinges on the community and people acting as a collective rather than an individualistic mindset.
India is the country where your neighbours know exactly what you had for dinner last night, where your aunts track your marriage prospects with the diligence of SEBI investigators, where no life event, birth, birthday, wedding, or even a mildly decent exam result, goes uncelebrated without a hundred people showing up with mithai.
This is the same India where people can flit from a Diwali mela to Eid celebrations to Durga Puja pandals to Ganesh Chaturthi pooja all in the same month, sometimes. Where crowds of people are nothing unusual to us. The same India where joint families can pack four generations deep into a two-bedroom apartment, and any major or minor issue is enough to have a throng of neighbours come out either to just witness or help in whatever way they can.
That very India has just been ranked as the second loneliest nation on the planet. A global survey has just placed India in second place among the loneliest countries of the world.
What Did The Survey Say?
A June 2026 global study, conducted by JB.com, a digital entertainment platform, which examined emotional well-being and social isolation across 36 nations, shares an interesting and concerning part of India that many tend to ignore. The study, using a composite “loneliness score”, ranked countries based on factors such as loneliness, isolation, sadness and household patterns.
The rankings placed Turkey at the top with a composite loneliness score of 100, followed by India at 89, Brazil at 78, South Africa at fourth, and South Korea at fifth.
At the other end of the spectrum, Uzbekistan and the Netherlands emerged as the least lonely nations, while Canada and Thailand also featured among the relatively less lonely countries in the study.
According to the study, 58% of Indians feel lonely, while 34% reported experiencing isolation. Another 37% of Indians claimed that they often feel sad. This was the highest proportion among all the top five loneliest countries surveyed. India is not just lonely; it is sad in a way that outpaces every other country in the top rankings.
This becomes even more bizarre when the study reported that only around 3.7% of Indian households are single-person homes, with a larger average household size, including more than four members. According to the study, “This suggests loneliness in India is emotional rather than physical.”
Read More: ResearchED: Why Are Indians, Young And Old Both, Feeling So Lonely?
An expert, quoted by the study, commenting on this said, “People use streaming, social media, and gaming to fill time that would otherwise be spent with others. But passive consumption does not cure loneliness—it numbs it.”
They added, “The countries at the top of this list have high entertainment engagement but low social trust. People are watching more and talking less.”
This is not the first time that India has found a place among the loneliest countries of the world. Last year, a World Population Review report citing data from OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and national surveys, ranked India at the sixth place among ‘Most Lonely Countries’.
In another separate, academically peer-reviewed study titled “Loneliness, Depression and Generalized Anxiety Across Eight Countries”, published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology on February 5, 2026, also claimed the same.
The study, led by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, analysed data from the 2023–2024 Global Social Determinants of Health Survey, which surveyed 7,997 adults across eight countries, with approximately 1,000 respondents per country. India was among the eight nations studied alongside Brazil, France, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Türkiye, and the United States.
The WashU study also found a concerning generational pattern where, among the 18–24 age group across all eight countries surveyed, nearly one in two young adults reported feeling lonely, a figure significantly higher than the roughly 30% reported by adults aged 55 or older. This is not an elderly population retreating into isolation; it is young people, in their most socially active years, feeling untethered.
Experts believe there are various reasons for this rise in loneliness. As per neuropsychiatrist Dr Amrit Pattojoshi, “You can sit in a full room and still feel invisible. Loneliness isn’t about how many people are around you. It’s about whether you feel genuinely seen and connected. That gap between the connection you want and what you actually have, that’s loneliness.”
Dr Pattojoshi explains loneliness as, “Low mood that won’t lift. Feeling like a burden. Withdrawing from people. Scrolling for hours but feeling worse after. Trouble sleeping. Minor illnesses piling up. These are the quiet signs. Most people don’t name it. They just feel off.”
Dr Anuradha P S was quoted by The Print, saying, “The density that urban life brings is paradoxically creating disconnection as well. People are living in close proximity, but without emotional closeness. Millions reside in apartment towers where they hardly know their neighbours. Digital communication is constant but there are fewer and fewer meaningful interpersonal relationships. These days, many young professionals will spend an entire day never interacting with anyone face-to-face, just going through a series of online interactions, delivery orders, and workplace chats. Despite constant digital connectivity, young Indians are facing emotional overwhelm, isolation, and a reduced capacity to establish meaningful relationships.”
India’s problem is not a lack of people. It is a collapse of the quality and depth of human connection, driven by structural economic forces that are unlikely to reverse themselves.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Firstpost, News18, World Population Review
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