‘Together’ Review: All the Lonely People wsj.com A Wall Street Journal review of a timely book written before the time of the coronavirus. It feels pretty accurate to me. Some highlights of the review: “Dr. Murthy be­gins by high­light­ing re­search show­ing that iso­la­tion is not our nat­ural state: We evolved as so­cial be­ings. “Hu­mans have sur­vived as a species,” he writes, “not be­cause we have phys­i­cal ad­van­tages like size, strength, or speed, but be­cause of our abil­ity to con­nect in so­cial groups. We ex­change ideas. We co­or­di­nate goals. We share in­for­ma­tion and emo­tions.” “It fol­lows that when we’re not rou­tinely so­cial­iz­ing, we feel that some­thing is amiss. Re­searchers have found three “di­men­sions” of lone­li­ness, Dr. Murthy re­ports: “in­ti­mate” (want­ing a spouse or con­fi­dant), “re­la­tional” (seek­ing close friend­ships) and “col­lec­tive” (de­sir­ing a com­mu­nity with com­mon in­ter­ests). To thrive, we need to find the right ap­proach to each of them, and lone­li­ness can re­sult if even one is left un­ful­filled.” “As for the surge in lone­li­ness amid an ar­ray of so­cial-me­dia tools, Dr. Murthy ac­knowl­edges the value of plat­forms such as Face­book for spe­cific tasks, such as find­ing old friends and or­ga­niz­ing peo­ple with shared in­ter­ests. And he cites re­search show­ing that an hour or two of daily screen time for chil­dren is harm­less. (No screen time at all, he says, can lead to chil­dren feel­ing ex­cluded, given that their peers are on­line.) But he notes that so­cial-me­dia plat­forms suck up pre­cious time by prey­ing on the hu­man de­sire for nov­elty. For chil­dren and adults alike, he warns that tech­nol-ogy of­fers fleet­ing ben­e­fits, threat­en­ing to re­place mean­ing­ful friend­ships with su­per­fi­cial at­tach­ments.”