The Story: Two Segments, One Urgent Warning

Just the News featured Communio founder and president J.P. De Gance in two separate video segments, each addressing a dimension of the same underlying crisis: a generation of young Americans who are more isolated, more relationally impoverished, and less likely to marry than any generation in recent memory.

Taken together, the two segments form one of the most direct and data-grounded assessments of the loneliness and marriage crisis that De Gance has given on a national platform. And the two quotes that anchor them deserve to be read by every pastor in America.

The first: “9 out of 10 parents say it’s very important that their kids are financially independent, but only 2 out of 10 say that it’s important that they get married.”

The second: “The number of young men who say they have not much more than one or two close friends is incredibly high.”

These are not anecdotal impressions. They are data points from national surveys, and they point to the same conclusion: America has a loneliness crisis. Its root is the decline of marriage. And the decline of marriage is being accelerated by a cultural framework that parents are passing directly to their children.

► Watch: J.P. De Gance connects loneliness crisis to lack of marriage → justthenews.com

► Watch: J.P. De Gance warns of declining social norms and rising isolation → justthenews.com

The Core Finding: The Loneliest Americans Are Not Who You Think

The popular image of the loneliness crisis centers on the elderly — isolated seniors living alone, cut off from family and community. That is a real and significant problem. But De Gance’s Just the News appearances surface a finding that challenges the dominant narrative directly.

The loneliest demographic in America is not the elderly. It is unmarried adults in their 30s.

This finding makes sense when you understand what marriage actually does, beyond the romantic and religious dimensions that most people focus on. Marriage is a social infrastructure. It is the relationship that most reliably draws two people into a shared household, a shared community, a shared web of extended family, friendships, and local involvement. A married person is not just a person with a spouse. They are a person embedded in a relational network that grows and deepens over time.

When that infrastructure is absent — when a person reaches their 30s still single, still living alone, still navigating life without the anchor that marriage provides — the social consequences are measurable. Fewer close friendships. Less community involvement. Higher rates of depression, anxiety, and the specific kind of existential loneliness that comes not from being around too few people but from having too few people who actually know you.

De Gance’s second segment adds a further dimension. The number of young men who report having only one or two close friends is not just high in absolute terms. It represents a historic collapse in the social connectedness of men, one that has accelerated alongside the decline in marriage rates, the rise of screen-based leisure, and the broader retreat from the kinds of institutional and community life — churches, civic organizations, neighborhoods with real social density — that historically provided men with the friendships and social norms that shaped their relational development.

The Counterintuitive Angle: Parents Are Raising Their Children for Loneliness Without Realizing It

Here is the finding in De Gance’s Just the News appearances that should prompt every parent in your congregation to pause and reconsider what they are actually communicating to their children.

Nine out of ten parents say it is very important that their kids become financially independent. Only two out of ten say the same about their children getting married.

That gap — the 70-percentage-point difference between the priority given to financial independence and the priority given to marriage — is not a neutral cultural fact. It is a transmission. Children receive what their parents prioritize. And when financial independence is held out as the primary measure of a successful adult life, marriage becomes, at best, a secondary consideration — something to think about once the career is established, the savings are in place, the apartment is furnished, and the checklist of individual achievements is complete.

The research on what that sequence actually produces is now well-documented. Delayed marriage produces more loneliness, not less. More financial instability, not more. More mental health challenges, more social isolation, and less of the relational depth that comes from building a committed life with another person over time.

Parents who have absorbed the cultural message that financial independence comes first and marriage comes later are not being negligent. They are passing on what the culture gave them. But the data says they are inadvertently raising their children for the very loneliness that is now measurable in national surveys — and visible in the faces of the unmarried 30-somethings who represent the loneliest demographic in America.

The local church is the most capable institution to offer a different message — and to make it credible by surrounding young adults with the community and the relational formation that makes marriage feel not just desirable but attainable.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, De Gance’s Just the News appearances surface something we see confirmed in every church we work with: the loneliness crisis and the marriage crisis are the same crisis. You cannot address one without addressing the other. And the local church is uniquely positioned to address both.

Think about the young adults in your congregation. The men in their late 20s and 30s who have one or two friends — at most — and no clear relational community outside of work and the occasional Sunday morning. The women navigating a dating culture that has made meaningful connection feel rare and unreliable. The singles who want marriage but have absorbed, from their parents and the broader culture, a set of priorities that keeps pushing it further into the future.

These young adults are not looking for a lecture on marriage. They are not primarily looking for a singles ministry event. They are looking for genuine community — a place where they are known, where friendships form naturally, where the social norms around commitment and relationship are modeled by people they respect, and where the vision of a married, rooted, family-oriented life is held out as something real and worth pursuing.

The local church is that place. Or it should be. And building the relational culture that makes it that place for a generation that is losing the infrastructure of connection — that is the work Communio helps churches do.

The loneliness crisis has a solution. It is not a government program. It is not a social media campaign. It is a church that takes the relational formation of its young adults as seriously as it takes everything else it does — and that builds the community, the culture, and the vision that the data says a generation is desperately searching for.

Take the Next Step

Communio partners with churches to build marriage and relationship ministry that reaches young adults, builds genuine community, and creates the relational culture where the path from isolation to belonging becomes real.

► Watch: J.P. De Gance connects loneliness crisis to lack of marriage → justthenews.com

► Watch: J.P. De Gance warns of declining social norms and rising isolation → justthenews.com

► Explore Communio’s resources for churches → communio.org

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the loneliest Americans? According to J.P. De Gance on Just the News, the loneliest demographic in America is not the elderly, as most people assume. It is unmarried adults in their 30s. Marriage functions as social infrastructure, embedding people in a relational network of shared household, community, extended family, and friendships that deepens over time. When that infrastructure is absent, the social consequences are measurable and significant.

What does the parenting priorities data show? National survey data cited by De Gance shows that nine out of ten parents say it is very important that their children become financially independent, while only two out of ten say the same about their children getting married. This 70-percentage-point gap represents a cultural transmission: children live out their parents’ priorities, and when marriage is a secondary concern, young adults treat it that way — delaying or forgoing it in ways that produce the loneliness the data documents.

Why are young men particularly affected by the loneliness and isolation crisis? De Gance notes that the number of young men who report having only one or two close friends is incredibly high — a historic collapse in male social connectedness. This has accelerated alongside the decline in marriage rates, the rise of screen-based leisure, and the retreat from the institutional and community life that historically shaped male social development. Fewer friendships means fewer pathways to marriage, and fewer marriages means more isolation.

Is the loneliness crisis primarily a social or a spiritual problem? It is both, and the local church is positioned to address both dimensions. Loneliness at its core is a relational problem: the absence of the deep, committed, knowing relationships that human beings are designed for. Marriage is the most reliable builder of that kind of relationship. The church is the community most capable of cultivating the social norms, relational formation, and vision of committed love that makes both friendship and marriage more likely.

How can Communio help churches address the loneliness and marriage crisis among young adults? Communio helps churches build the relational culture and ministry strategy that reaches young adults where they are — through community events designed as low-stakes, genuine points of connection, through young adult ministry that builds friendship and social norms alongside faith formation, and through a data-informed approach to marriage and relationship ministry that addresses the upstream conditions driving both the loneliness and marriage decline. To learn more, visit communio.org.

Credit: This post draws on two video features from Just the News featuring J.P. De Gance, President of Communio: “JP De Gance connects loneliness crisis to lack of marriage” and “JP De Gance warns of declining social norms and rising isolation among young adults.” Watch both at justthenews.com.