The biohacking industry will sell you red light panels, continuous glucose monitors, cold plunge tubs, and a supplement stack that costs a small fortune. Bryan Johnson has turned his entire existence into a longevity experiment with a publicist. And through all of it, one of the best-supported ways to live longer is constantly overlooked because you can’t bottle it or slap a sensor on it.
Dr. Eric Verdin, president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, told the New York Post that all this longevity optimization can miss something painfully basic. “Loneliness and isolation drive chronic stress, and chronic stress drives inflammation,” he said. His recommendations require no subscription or charging cable. Sleep well, move your body, eat properly, reduce stress, and spend time with people you like.
Then there’s the cigarette comparison. In 2010, Brigham Young University psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad led a meta-analysis of more than 300,000 people and found that poor social connection carried a death risk comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. People with stronger relationships were also 50% more likely to survive over the study period.
A June 2025 WHO Commission report put a much bigger number on the global problem. One in six people worldwide experiences loneliness, and the Commission estimates it contributes to more than 871,000 deaths a year—around 100 every hour. In May 2025, the World Health Assembly passed its first resolution on social connection.
Want to Live Longer? Spend More Time With People You Actually Like.
Verdin calls it “inflammaging,” the low-grade inflammation associated with chronic stress and age-related disease. Loneliness can keep that response switched on, while close relationships help turn the volume down. It is one of those findings that makes the billion-dollar longevity industry look slightly overengineered compared with dinner and a few good friends.
Gerontologist Dr. Kerry Burnight has a name for the part of longevity that gets neglected: “joyspan,” the years when life remains enjoyable. Her book (also called Joyspan) points to growing, connecting, adapting, and giving as the core practices. It’s a very old-fashioned answer to a very modern obsession with living forever.
The future of longevity will still involve better drugs, smarter diagnostics, and machines with very expensive branding. Fine. It’s still hard to ignore the fact that one of the oldest human habits may also be one of the healthiest. See your people, stay awhile, and come back next week.
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