Because I co-founded what was a weblog company, back before social media, and then during the era of social media, I have spent a lot of time thinking about this issue: could a business address the issue of loneliness? And I've come around to thinking the answer is a definite "no." Partly that is because a business will tend to have a transactional relationship to customers, and it is the transactional nature of modern life that contributes to feelings of loneliness. So issue of loneliness is a political question, and it needs to be solved by political means. No company can solve it directly.
There are, of course, millions of businesses that can help facilitate social connection. Every restaurant in the country is a potential meeting place, so every restaurant in the country helps alleviate loneliness. But getting people to come out to a restaurant involves issues that are political:
* do people feel comfortable in public spaces,
* do public spaces accommodate people with health issues or disability,
* do public spaces accommodate children,
* do privacy laws keep people from being mocked on the internet, if they go to a restaurant badly dressed, or poorly dressed,
* do people have the money to go to restaurants on some regular basis
* are the streets safe enough for people to get to restaurants
* does transportation exist so that people can get to restaurants
And here I'm using restaurants as an example, but of course there are thousands of different kinds of businesses that I could make a similar list for. I could, for instance, make a similar list for gyms, and the issue of privacy in gyms is a somewhat controversial issue, but it is true that strict privacy laws can help alleviate some of the stress of going to a gym for people who have social anxiety, or for people who have body image issues.
There are also some questions of habit that ride a fine line between politics and culture. For instances, two acquaintances agree to meet at a restaurant, how much bragging about one's career success is allowed? At what point does it become pure status competition? This is more of a cultural question than a political question, but it is not entirely devoid of political meaning.
You get the idea. On a simple level, if you want to build a business that combats loneliness, then just open a restaurant. But if you want to get into the "root causes" of loneliness, then you'd have to address a bunch of political and cultural issues that sometimes keep people from coming out to restaurants.
Some of the groups that are known to suffer high levels of loneliness:
the disabled
mothers with young children
the elderly
Each of these groups needs different things, but we should note the things they need are things which could be provided by political action:
accessibility
places where children can play
connection with their family
The last of these is the most complicated, and every family is different, but giving families the time to remain in touch with family members is something that politics can influence.
Another group that suffers loneliness is young people who are stuck at home with their parents. This group mostly lacks spaces where they can socialize. Here the solution is obvious: build more housing. Abundant housing means inexpensive housing that young people can afford. In the USA the best year for the ratio of average wage to average rent was 1958, when the average worker was only spending 22% of their income on rent. And by no coincidence, this was the peak year of the Baby Boom, as young people found it easy to start families in such an environment.
Housing effects all else. See what we wrote in The Inclusive City, where we reviewed the work of Leslie Kern. Merely giving people multiple options about where they want to live already solves several problems relating to socializing, taking care of children and taking care of the elderly. There is nothing else where having options so empowers people against loneliness.
Of course, a reasonable person would engage in a bit of reflection on this point. If the political system can do so much to alleviate loneliness, then why has loneliness become an epidemic? The obvious answer is that, after 1958 and the Baby Boom, the USA took actions that favored efficiency and capital over labor, in ways that eventually allowed a rift to develop between wages and rents.
The obvious point is that some of these harmful decisions can be reversed. And the decisions were political, so reversing them is also political.