Too many Zooms, too little face time. Is remote work making us lonely?

Alyse Lopez-Salm, who lives in a small North Carolina town close to the military base that employs her husband, is one of the 35 million Americans who work from home.

Pregnant with her second child, Lopez-Salm says a morning exercise class that replaced her hourlong commute helps her stay healthy. When her 6-year-old finishes summer camp at lunchtime, she can take a break and pick him up. Anytime her rheumatoid arthritis flares, she can work in a more comfortable position on the carpeted floor of her home office.

"Working from home is everything to me," Lopez-Salm said. "Your results are what matter, not you physically being in a building."

The COVID-19 pandemic that shut down offices across the country changed the way people work – and many Americans say it’s been for the better.

No more long commutes in rush hour. Parents can be on hand for pediatrician appointments and soccer matches. The sandwich generation can tend to an aging or ailing parent without skipping work. Those with disabilities get more job offers. Remote workers may even have more babies.

Working from home also has downsides. About half of remote workers said they feel less connected to colleagues. There are fewer opportunities for younger workers to find mentors and soak up knowledge. Too often, work bleeds into home life.

Now, a study from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the University of Virginia and Harvard University published in Science has raised a new concern that remote work worsens mental health. 

Does remote work make people unhappy?

More Americans today are lonely and the way they work is contributing to that sense of isolation, said Emma Harrington, one of the authors of the study that drew on data from more than 588,000 workers.

Nearly 9 in 10 workers in "remote capable" jobs – versus jobs that must be done in person – spend their workday completely alone, the study found, and they socialize after work less, with entire days going by with no face-to-face interactions. They experience higher rates of distress, mental health visits and prescriptions for antidepressants, researchers concluded. Of the increase in mental distress between 2011 and 2024, the study estimated that remote work accounted for a third, especially among people who live alone.

"Everyone sees an increase in the number of hours that they're spending alone, largely driven by their workday," said Harrington, an economics professor at the University of Virginia and coauthor of the upcoming book "In Person." "But for people living alone, that's more likely to translate into just spending your entire day with no social contact and never leaving the house."

The researchers' methodology and findings generated heated online debate and pushback from fellow academics who point to a vast body of research that remote and hybrid work actually boost well-being.

In two randomized trials conducted by Stanford economist Nick Bloom, for example, workers reported improved mental health, not worse.

"The simple story is when people can work from home, they can reduce commuting stress, control their time better and have more time with friends and family," he said.

Remote work affects different people in different ways, Bloom said. Some people crave company and prefer to be in the office five days a week, while others want to be fully remote. For many, hybrid work is the happy medium.

The best way to improve people’s mental health, in Bloom’s opinion? Let them choose the option that works best for them.

"If anyone finds working from home problematic, they can always go into the office or change jobs," he said. "So I don’t see how you can find something that employees love and repeatedly choose to do can be bad for them."

'Many of us see each other face-to-face much less'

Harrington’s study was not the first to explore mental distress among remote workers.

As part of his work overseeing health and performance programs at Google for 17 years, Newton Cheng researched the studies to understand the isolation and loneliness that can accompany working from home.

When he left his corporate job to strike out on his own last September, Cheng experienced it firsthand. He missed the office chitchat and face time.

"I think the evidence clearly shows that hybrid and remote work really help people’s health and well-being. However, for me personally, I find remote work kind of isolating," he said. "If you leave me to my own devices, I could sit in an office and just do research and reading and writing and not see anyone for days at a time. So I have to find other ways to socialize and spend time with people, or else I start to feel lonely."

Cheng sets up in-person meetings whenever he can. If he doesn’t need to work from home, he heads for a coffee shop or the library and makes a point of striking up conversations.

On Tuesday nights, a pizza truck sets up shop at a nearby park, so he takes his two kids every week so he can bond with other parents in his West Los Angeles neighborhood. A competitive power lifter, he often trains at a friend’s gym rather than hoisting weights in his own garage so he can connect with people who share his passion for it.

"I don't think the workplace should be at the top of my list for places where I go to make friends, but that is the reality for so many of us. That is the one place we’re going to see each other," Cheng said. "Now, many of us see each other face-to-face much less the way we have in the past."

Are we lonely at work or just lonely?

Gemma Dale, a researcher and a flexible, hybrid and remote work specialist, said the mental health crisis is a global problem.

Long before the pandemic, Americans began spending more time alone and less time socializing in person. For a time, the bonds they formed at work helped make up for declining participation in community activities such as church, neighborhood associations, or sports teams. Recent workplace shifts have deepened the loneliness epidemic.

"Even within this report, the worst symptoms are experienced by those who live alone, which highlights what we’ve known for decades − the remote work experience is contextual," Dale said.

Ruth White, a psychotherapist and workplace mental health consultant, says she worked remotely for nearly a decade and loved it. She traveled the world visiting friends and family, went sailing on Wednesdays and walked a nearby lake almost daily. But in her practice, she saw another side: Workers counting on the office to meet all of their social needs.

"When work becomes primarily virtual, those opportunities for connection can disappear and many people feel isolated and may experience depression or anxiety," she wrote on LinkedIn.

So she works with her clients to help them build a social life outside of work.

"The healthiest workplaces of the future won’t be those that force everyone back to the office or those that abandon in-person connection altogether," White said. "They’ll be the ones that intentionally create opportunities for meaningful human connection – whether employees work remotely, hybrid, or in person."

'Engineering moments that matter'

That’s how Brian Elliott, CEO of Work Forward and publisher of the Flex Index, sees it.

"Asking the office to fix the loneliness epidemic is a tall order," he told USA TODAY. But employers can and should do more.

"The issue is that most companies treat remote work as a default, not as something that requires design around connection. Firms cut back on gatherings, travel budgets, training," Elliott wrote in the Flex Index. "No one’s checking in. No one’s engineering moments that matter."

The study’s finding that mental distress for people living alone nearly doubled when they worked remotely is not an argument for everyone to return to the office, he said.

Easy fixes can help bring people together. For example, a recent study found that remote workers coming to the office one day a month increases productivity by 8% and cuts attrition by a third while boosting job satisfaction and improving communication.

Harrington said she’s not suggesting we rewind the clock to 2019, when most work took place in person and in the office. Instead, employers and employees should create "purposeful doses of in-person time" such as weekly one-on-ones or regular off-sites.

"The pre-pandemic office was not always a super social place and people often were just working in their own cubicles," she said. "There is an opportunity to do more with fewer days if we're just more intentional about how those days are actually being spent."