One in three people suffer from loneliness in the UK, according to new research from social networking app Bumble. Actress and campaigner Jameela Jamil has been enlisted to front the app's new campaign destigmatising this all-too-common issue. Here, she talks to us about what's driving our feelings of isolation - yes, social media plays a role, but so does society's veneration of romantic relationships over platonic friendships. For those feeling alone, how should we tackle and overcome our loneliness? Allow Jamil's words to reassure and soothe, while making you laugh at your desk.

Don't worry if you haven't met your people yet

"I didn’t have any mates until I was about 19. I was super socially inept, chubby and brown in a school of thin, white girls. I just didn’t fit in. I didn’t even have my first kiss until I was 21. The first two decades of my life were very lonely and making friends at 19 had a massive impact on my life. I wouldn’t have become a TV presenter if it hadn’t been for friends bringing me out of my shell, who showed me that I was worth something. I don’t know what state I’d been in if I hadn’t found my people.

"I want everyone, no matter how different and bizarre you are – and I’m quite different and bizarre - to know that there are people out there for you. Sometimes it’s just hard to find. Perhaps you work long hours and don’t have time to socialise, or maybe you have small children and you’re at home a lot, or perhaps you have a disability and there aren’t places accessible to you… there are instances where you can’t physically get out to meet people. Bumble BFF’s new global campaign #askingforafriend is a simple, easy way to get around this and it’s not about sex, or love. It’s about something pure and mindful and it aligns with everything that I Weigh is about – destigmatising the things that people feel embarrassed to talk about like mental health and relationships."

Understand that feeling lonely is natural

"Bumble’s research shows that two thirds of people in the UK feel lonely. We’re a small little country; there are always people around, we’re surrounded constantly; and there’s rarely not an armpit in your face on the underground. All this and still everyone seems isolated. Because we don’t talk about it, we don’t have an opportunity to resolve it. Bumble is saying, ‘let’s talk about it, we’re going to create a safe space where it’s easy for you to go out and find other people who also feel the same way and become friends.’ They’re removing the taboo. Feeling lonely is natural. We’ve made the world so expensive to live in that everyone has to work to live which is devastating – it’s decreased our socialising and upped our stress levels."

Don't replace real human interaction with social media

"Social media can often afford you a false sense of interaction with people. There is true interaction on social media and that’s great, but sometimes those platforms give you a false sense of how much you’re engaging with your friends. We think we’re up to date with our friends lives, but really, we’re just up to date with their highlights reel. We don’t realise that we’re disconnected from them because we don’t miss them, as we keep seeing them on our feeds. We don’t have the opportunity to crave them. It’s only when you’re sitting down privately with a friend do you understand what is actually going on in their lives. I’m so guilty of that. I keep seeing my friends on social media and my stupid brain tells me that we’re in touch, but we’re not, we haven’t had a proper chat in two months or however long. This campaign has got me thinking about how I connect with my own friends."

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Try and lose your fear of rejection

"We’re so fearful about the idea of rejection, about putting yourself out there and being rejected. We terrify kids about that from the minute they’re born. This scaremongering around rejection lends itself to issues around consent – boys don’t know how to hear the word no, and girls don’t know how to say the word no. We don’t tell people that rejection is fine – it just means incompatibility which is natural and normal. There’s also this idea of shame. I’m so uninterested in shame, I’m not here for it. I felt like there was something wrong with me when I was a teenager without friends, but there was nothing wrong with me – I just hadn’t met my people yet. There are seven billion people in the world. It’s ridiculous to think that there’s no one out there for you; of course, there are, you just haven’t been looking in the right places."

If you can't get a group of friends together, meet them individually

"We’re fed this idea from film and TV that you meet your friends when you’re 20 and you’re all in a group doing everything together all the time. I can’t coordinate my own adult friends to meet up at the same time - it’s like organising a general election. What the fuck did the women in Sex and the City do? How did they manage to hang out every day? There’s no world in which I could imagine seeing all my best friends every day and confidently be up to date. I have a dog and about five jobs and they’ve got kids. I’ve got one friendship group that I see sometimes, then friends I see on an individual basis because who's got time for a group in their 30s? Come on now. One-on-one is the only way; you have to build on those friendships."

Remember that we never stop making friends

"We don’t know that we’re supposed to keep making friends. Everyone says you make your lifelong friends in your 20s, you get married and have babies exactly at the same time and then eventually you die. It’s a nice idea, but it’s not realistic. We keep finding people as we go along and sometimes, as we grow older, we lose friends we made when we were younger and that’s OK too. We have to change our whole conversation about friendship. We need to change the taboo of ending friendship. It’s so weird that you can leave a partner of 20 years who you have children with, but you can’t break up with a friend. How is there no protocol for that? We need to teach people that you will keep finding people along the way. We’re always shifting, changing and updating and we need new people to fulfil those new facets of ourselves. When you make a new friend in adulthood it feels like being at school again – that feeling of finding someone you really get on with never goes away (well, how I imagine it was making friends at school anyway…)"



Seek out people with similar interests to you

"If you’re feeling lonely, take a hard look at the campaign and the statistics and understand that you are not on your own. Get out of the house and go and find hobbies that you love. You’re more likely to find people you are suited to when you’re doing things you really enjoy. I met my boyfriend, who is my best friend who I’m in love with, doing a job that we really loved at Radio 1. We found we had a common ground there. Even if he didn’t end up being my boyfriend, he would have been my best friend. If you can’t get to the thing you love, download the app."

Make sure you curate your social media space

"That mute button is a bloody dream. Mute people whose lifestyles or bodies make you feel rubbish. I mute everyone that triggers that feeling of inadequacy (if I unfollow or delete them it gets announced to the world) because if I didn’t know about that person’s life I’d be completely fine with my own. We feed that comparison porn in all of us. I had to unfollow the Hadids because I was comparing my face and body to theirs. I unfollowed a bunch of supermodels because I felt it wasn't healthy; it didn't feel good. I’m smart but I’m not smart enough to override my brain and it’s my brain that trips me up because I don’t look like these airbrushed, skinny women. It’s a lifestyle thing too – these people who look like they’re always on vacation or who have the best relationship ever. I work with and have met some of the most adored people in the world and those people are often the loneliest. The way they project their lifestyle to the world is so different to the reality.

We are all prone to loneliness, anyone in any situation. Understand that it’s not your fault, don’t internalise blame and know that you just haven’t met your people yet."

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