Research indicates that Americans were already spending less time in person with friends and family before 2020, when COVID-19 shut down much social interaction. This falling contact forms the background to the continuing "loneliness epidemic" — widespread and worsening isolation, treated as a public health problem. But among all the consequences of a changing climate, the way it aggravates that epidemic may be one of the least noticed. Recent work by the researcher's team in rural Appalachia identified several routes by which extreme weather puts additional obstacles in the way of social activity.

Extreme heat was one of the leading stories in news coverage worldwide over the summer. Once outdoor temperatures reach dangerous levels, people withdraw indoors to sit in air conditioning or beside electric fans, and that withdrawal may carry a social price. A 28-year-old social worker told the research team that such heat was not something the worker remembered from childhood. People, the worker added, are reluctant to leave home or turn up at community events in those conditions.

Heavy storms and flooding restrict movement too, making journeys dangerous or simply impossible, so that people cannot go out, reach relatives or join social occasions. Interruptions of this sort can wear away the ordinary day-to-day contacts through which people feel connected.

Communication routes that people rely on to stay in touch can be cut by extreme weather as well. Violent storms, floods, winter conditions and dangerous heat are all linked with power cuts, and those cuts can deprive residents of electricity for as long as several weeks. A loss of power frequently arrives together with breaks in internet and mobile service. Messages, calls, social media and email are blocked just when they matter most. A 74-year-old rural resident told the team "We're so isolated". The household's only mobile service, that resident explained, runs through Wi-Fi, so a power cut leaves the house with no phone and, as the resident described it, no connections at all.