>"Is my soul yearning for spiritual connection? I've got a good friend for that. My libido looking for an exhilarating one? There's bars and the ubiquitous 'more-than-friend-but-not-quite-committed' friendship we all seem to have but never seem to really look to for that sort of thing. The least lonely person I know is in his late 70s. He's always talking to someone whenever I see him."

Academic research may be a good starting point. A 2021 study reports that ~29.5% of Americans aged 55 and older "were considered high in loneliness" in 2020 (source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34283657/). Loneliness was correlated with "those who reported depression, who were not married or in a relationship, who lived alone, and who were unemployed at the onset of the pandemic."

Anecdotally, I found it unusually difficult to go to pubs for hookups when I was younger. I never once had a "'more-than-friend-but-not-quite-committed' friendship." I suspect it was partly due to race as an ethnic minority; there is an effect has been well-established from studies (source: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/09/575352051/least-desirable-how...) that there are negative preferences against men and women of a specific race in online dating. Factors largely out of one's control, from ethnicity to difficulties with picking up social cues, can contribute to a lack of relationships.

To connect this to the previous study, where loneliness was correlated to those "who were not married or in a relationship, who lived alone," it's quite possible that a significant driver of the loneliness in the United States the lack of committed long-term relationships between people.

The search for a solution to a lack of relationships by an individual can lead to many dangerous paths. It can tragically lead to extremism and terror attacks (such as the 2018 van attack in Toronto, source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54895219). It can lead to people to join movements such as the "manosphere" or "female dating strategy," where they feel less alone with their problems, but pick up bad habits that make it far more difficult to have a healthy relationship. I believe that these movements have contributed to emotional abuse in relationships and sexual assault by people who push boundaries.

A starting solution I recommend is this:

i) Recognize that many people are lonely because they can't create romantic relationships, or even friendships.

ii) Instead of isolating them or alienating them, figure out why they can't create these relationships. Are they in good psychological health (e.g. would they have untreated depression, anxiety, ADHD, or grief)? Do they have social skills? How can they access readily-available treatment methods from a reputable source (i.e. a competent and experienced counsellor, versus a dating coach who exploits people who are lonely)?

iii) Building on the previous step, ask: are they economically secure? Can they find a stable job where they can provide for themselves, which can treat the root causes of potential depression and anxiety (which also helps them find relationships and friends more easily)?

Each step can be very hard, but I believe this can help reduce vagueness to some extent.

However, there are unfortunately many edge cases where these steps don't work. Examples include severe and persistent mental health disorders; people who want a relationship but struggle greatly due to a physical or mental disorder; or people who don't want to help themselves. For at least some of these people, some countries offer "sexual surrogacy," where a licensed counsellor eventually provides physical intimacy in a controlled environment (source: https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-sexual-surrogacy), but I haven't read enough about it to tell if it's effective. It's tougher for what to do with people who don't want help, though.

For the individual struggling with loneliness, I would recommend focusing on improving the stability of one's own life and working on social skills without studying pickup artistry. Good resources for improving social skills without pickup artistry are typically written by psychologists or psychiatrists with clinical experience, such as "Intimate Connections" by David Burns (same author as "Feeling Good," a reputable book on cognitive-behavioral techniques). At the least, a focus on financial independence and stability can be a good foundation to working on the other problems in life, as it's harder to be happy and create meaningful relationships with money problems.