The heyday of transactional intimacy is upon us. You may hire a companion to accompany you around Manhattan’s Strand bookstore if you have $40 per hour and a PayPal account. A professional “cuddler” can hold you in a non-sexual embrace while you discuss your day if you have $80 per hour. Additionally, you may buy a social robot—a wide-eyed desktop buddy or a mechanical seal—that is designed to mimic emotional attunement without the complexity of a true relationship if human interaction seems too unpredictable.
This is known as the “Loneliness Economy,” a rapidly expanding market that has hurried to fill a significant gap in the human experience with goods. This industry was created out of necessity rather than creativity. We have created a world that isolates us so effectively that we now have to repurchase the very ties that we have come to require.
This crisis is enormous in scope. The typical American had three close confidants twenty years ago, with whom they could confide their most private problems. That number fell to two ten years ago. It’s one today. If you take out family members, the figure is zero for a large percentage of the population. This is a public health issue, not just a depressing statistic. According to research, loneliness raises the chance of dementia by 64% and heart attacks by 30%, making it as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Key Factual Context: The Scale of the Crisis
| Metric | Detail |
| Market Response | Services like RentAFriend offer 620,000+ companions worldwide. |
| Cost of Connection | Professional “cuddling” services can cost upwards of $80/hour. |
| Health Risk | Loneliness linked to a 64% higher risk of dementia and 30% increase in heart attacks. |
| Social Decline | The average number of confidants dropped from three (20 years ago) to one today. |
| Biological Impact | Isolation triggers a “threat response,” increasing cortisol and epinephrine levels. |
| Primary Reference | Maclean’s: Friend rentals and robots |
I recall being deeply uneasy that we had to invent a remedy for something as basic as contact when I recently passed a “Hug Room” in a care facility—a plastic curtain intended to provide safe embracing during the pandemic.
Our bodies see isolation as a physical threat, which is a biological fact. Because we are social creatures, our ancestors were at risk from predators when they were by themselves. Our brains still respond to isolation with that innate dread, causing cortisol and adrenaline to flood our bodies. We continue to live in a low-grade fight-or-flight state of hypervigilance, which gradually weakens our cardiovascular and immune systems.
In response, the market has produced an odd variety of simulacra. Businesses such as WeWork made money off of the concept of community by purposefully narrowing office corridors to compel physical intimacy, marketing the possibility of collision in a world growing more and more isolated. A soul is projected into a circuit board by elderly Japanese ladies knitting bonnets for their robot partners because the alternative—silence—is too painful.
Relief from the “threat assessment” of the lonely brain is what this economy is offering, not simply services. This gap also contributes to the emergence of political populism. Strong “in-group” identities offered by movements offer a sedative for the fear of loneliness and a means of re-entering a herd, even if that herd is characterized by exclusion.
We are trying to use technology and commercial patches to address a spiritual and sociological issue. An AI chatbot or a leased friend may reduce the cortisol increase right away, but they are ultimately empty calories—a sugar rush of connection that eventually malnourishes us. The success of the Loneliness Economy is a critique of the society that created the need for it.
