The first skill I learned when I became a political science professor nearly 20 years ago was how to quiet a room full of chatty undergraduates.

These days, I often walk into a silent room, with students staring at their phones and barely acknowledging the classmates beside them.

As I read more about the United States’ loneliness crisis, I began noticing a version of it among my students.

In a 2026 national survey of over 40,000 college students, nearly 6 in 10 said they felt lonely sometimes or always. At the same time, federal time-use data show that the share of Americans who socialized in person with family, friends or others on an average day fell from 38% in 2015 to 30% in 2025.

Those and similar other studies capture a familiar contradiction seen on college campuses like my own: Many new students want close relationships, but feel anxious about initiating them and have had little practice sustaining them.

I realized that my students rarely spoke to one another, and went entire semesters without learning their classmates’ names. Many students seemed unsure how to cross the few feet between them and their peers and make the social connection they........

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