remote work – A new study using data from more than 588,000 workers links remote-capable jobs to higher mental distress—especially for people who live alone—sparking debate with evidence from randomized trials that found mental health benefits from remote and hybrid work.
The email might still come in, the laptop might still open on time, but for millions of Americans, the workday can pass without another person’s face entering the room.
That disconnect—between results on a screen and connection in real life—sits at the center of a new study that has reignited an old question: has the way Americans work helped drive the loneliness epidemic?
For Alyse Lopez-Salm. working from home has meant trading an hourlong commute for a morning exercise class. taking her 6-year-old to and from summer camp at lunchtime. and shifting positions when her rheumatoid arthritis flares. “Working from home is everything to me,” Lopez-Salm said. “Your results are what matter, not you physically being in a building.”.
But across the country, the same shift has also produced a different kind of cost. About half of remote workers said they feel less connected to colleagues. and fewer opportunities can exist for younger workers to find mentors and absorb knowledge. There’s also the risk of work bleeding into home life.
The new concern comes from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the University of Virginia and Harvard University, published in Science. The study drew on data from more than 588,000 workers and found that remote work can worsen mental health.
One of the study’s authors, Emma Harrington, said the evidence points to a link between remote work and rising loneliness. In her framing, the rise in loneliness tracks with how people spend their workday.
Nearly 9 in 10 workers in “remote capable” jobs—compared with jobs that must be done in person—spend their workday completely alone. The study also found that many socialize after work less, with entire days passing without any face-to-face interactions. Researchers reported higher rates of distress, mental health visits, and prescriptions for antidepressants. Of the increase in mental distress between 2011 and 2024. the study estimated that remote work accounted for a third. “especially among people who live alone.”.
For people living alone. Harrington said. more time alone isn’t just a statistic—it can become a full day without social contact. “Everyone sees an increase in the number of hours that they’re spending alone, largely driven by their workday,” Harrington said. “But for people living alone. that’s more likely to translate into just spending your entire day with no social contact and never leaving the house.”.
Not everyone is persuaded by the broader takeaway.
The study’s methodology and findings triggered heated online debate and pushback from academics who argue there is a large body of research suggesting that remote and hybrid work can boost well-being. In two randomized trials conducted by Stanford economist Nick Bloom, workers reported improved mental health rather than worse outcomes.
Bloom described the mechanism as straightforward: remote work can reduce commuting stress. give people better control over their time. and create more time with friends and family. “The simple story is when people can work from home. they can reduce commuting stress. control their time better and have more time with friends and family. ” Bloom said.
He also stressed that remote work affects people differently. Some crave company and prefer being in the office five days a week. Others want to be fully remote. For many, he said, hybrid work is the compromise that fits.
“The best way to improve people’s mental health, in Bloom’s opinion?. Let them choose the option that works best for them,” he said. If someone finds remote work problematic, he added, they can go into the office or switch jobs. “If anyone finds working from home problematic, they can always go into the office or change jobs,” Bloom said. “So I don’t see how you can find something that employees love and repeatedly choose to do can be bad for them.”.
The argument is not only about what happens at home—it’s about what disappears when work stops being a built-in meeting place.
For Newton Cheng, the question became personal after he left his corporate job to start his own business last September. Cheng had spent 17 years overseeing health and performance programs at Google and had studied research on isolation and loneliness tied to working from home.
He said he experienced the social gap firsthand. “I think the evidence clearly shows that hybrid and remote work really help people’s health and well-being. However, for me personally, I find remote work kind of isolating,” Cheng said. “If you leave me to my own devices. I could sit in an office and just do research and reading and writing and not see anyone for days at a time. So I have to find other ways to socialize and spend time with people. or else I start to feel lonely.”.
Cheng tries to build connection through intention rather than office chance. He sets up in-person meetings when he can. If he doesn’t need to work from home, he heads to a coffee shop or the library and makes an effort to strike up conversations.
On Tuesday nights. a pizza truck stops at a nearby park. and Cheng brings his two kids each week to connect with other parents in his West Los Angeles neighborhood. He is also a competitive power lifter and often trains at a friend’s gym rather than in his own garage so he can share time with people who understand his sport.
“I don’t think the workplace should be at the top of my list for places where I go to make friends, but that is the reality for so many of us. That is the one place we’re going to see each other,” Cheng said. “Now, many of us see each other face-to-face much less the way we have in the past.”
Gemma Dale. a researcher and a flexible. hybrid and remote work specialist. said the mental health crisis is global and that Americans were already moving toward more isolation before the pandemic. Even before COVID-19, she noted, people were spending more time alone and less time socializing in person.
For a time, Dale said, bonds formed at work helped cover gaps left by declining participation in community activities such as church, neighborhood associations, or sports teams. But workplace shifts since then have deepened the loneliness epidemic.
“Even within this report, the worst symptoms are experienced by those who live alone, which highlights what we’ve known for decades − the remote work experience is contextual,” Dale said.
Ruth White, a psychotherapist and workplace mental health consultant, offered another perspective from her own experience. She said she worked remotely for nearly a decade and loved it—traveling the world visiting friends and family. going sailing on Wednesdays. and walking a nearby lake almost daily.
Her practice, though, revealed what can happen when the office is expected to supply the social life. “When work becomes primarily virtual, those opportunities for connection can disappear and many people feel isolated and may experience depression or anxiety,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
So White said she works with clients to build social routines outside of work. “The healthiest workplaces of the future won’t be those that force everyone back to the office or those that abandon in-person connection altogether. ” White said. “They’ll be the ones that intentionally create opportunities for meaningful human connection – whether employees work remotely. hybrid. or in person.”.
That idea—connection requiring design rather than wishing—also comes through in the push from business leaders who track remote work.
Brian Elliott, CEO of Work Forward and publisher of the Flex Index, said asking the office to solve loneliness is too much to expect, but employers can and should do more. Elliott told that companies often treat remote work as a default instead of something that requires planning around connection.
“The issue is that most companies treat remote work as a default, not as something that requires design around connection. Firms cut back on gatherings, travel budgets, training,” Elliott wrote in the Flex Index. “No one’s checking in. No one’s engineering moments that matter.”
Elliott said the study’s finding that mental distress for people living alone nearly doubled when they worked remotely is not an argument that everyone should return full-time to the office.
Instead, he pointed to “easy fixes” designed to bring people together. One example: a recent study found that remote workers coming to the office one day a month increases productivity by 8% and cuts attrition by a third while boosting job satisfaction and improving communication.
Harrington, too, said she was not suggesting a rewind to 2019, when most work took place in person and in the office. Employers and employees, she said, should aim for “purposeful doses of in-person time” such as weekly one-on-ones or regular off-sites.
“The pre-pandemic office was not always a super social place and people often were just working in their own cubicles,” she said. “There is an opportunity to do more with fewer days if we’re just more intentional about how those days are actually being spent.”
The reporting leaves a sharp tension in view: remote-capable work can mean longer stretches without face-to-face contact. and for those living alone the study points to worse mental health markers. But randomized trials and workplace experience suggest that remote and hybrid arrangements can improve well-being when they reduce commuting stress and give people flexibility—especially when companies treat social connection as something to build. not something that happens automatically.
In the end, the question may not be whether working from home is “good” or “bad.” It may be whether, in practice, the structure of the workday still leaves room for human contact—before loneliness has a chance to settle in.
remote work loneliness epidemic mental health Federal Reserve Bank of New York University of Virginia Harvard Science study antidepressant prescriptions Emma Harrington Nick Bloom hybrid work workplace connection