🌿 About Grooply
The future of healthcare is social.
When providers can prescribe belonging the way they prescribe medicine, everything changes — for every patient, every practice, every health system.
🚨 The clinical evidence
Loneliness is as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day
Chronic loneliness doesn't just hurt — it kills. The health risks are documented, measurable and largely preventable.
🫀 Health & mortality risks
🧠+50% dementia risk
Social isolation significantly increases the likelihood of developing dementia — making it one of the most preventable risk factors for cognitive decline.
Source: WHO, 2023
🫀+29% heart disease risk
Loneliness is a stronger predictor of cardiovascular disease than obesity or physical inactivity — and raises stroke risk by an additional 32%.
Source: WHO, 2023
⚠️+29% mortality risk
Chronic loneliness increases the risk of early death at rates comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day — contributing to an estimated 900,000 deaths per year in the US alone.
Source: Holt-Lunstad, 2015 · HHS, 2023
📉 The decline of in-person connection
📈Time alone is rising fast
Average daily time alone in the US rose from 285 minutes in 2003 to over 333 minutes pre-pandemic — a 17% increase in a single generation.
Source: American Time Use Survey, BLS
📉Face-to-face contact is collapsing
Nearly three-quarters of adults get together face-to-face with people they care about only twice a month or less.
Source: Surgeon General's Advisory, 2023
📱Social media deepens loneliness
Passive social media use is linked to higher loneliness rates — particularly when it replaces meaningful in-person interaction.
Source: Twenge et al., 2019
👥 Who is most affected
🎓Young people are hit hardest
Adolescents 13–17 have the highest global loneliness rate at 20.9%. In the US, 31% of 18–29 year olds report frequent loneliness — driven by digital isolation.
Source: WHO Commission, 2024 · Cigna, 2025
🏳️🌈LGBTQ+ communities disproportionately affected
Loneliness prevalence exceeds 50% in some LGBTQ+ populations — compounded by stigma and a lack of affirming community spaces.
Source: The Trevor Project, 2024
💔1 in 4 adults lacks emotional support
About 25% of US adults report having no close friends or lacking adequate social and emotional support
Source: Surgeon General's Advisory, 2023