A stay-at-home mom became a professional cuddler making $150 an hour

Tech Insider
Michelle Renee is a professional cuddler at Cuddlist.
Michelle Renee is a professional cuddler at Cuddlist.

Courtesy of Michelle Renee

The sad, lonely secret behind America's never-ending wave of Marvel movies and Disney reboots

Tech Insider : Economy
A conga line of franchise characters.
Media companies are in the business of selling nostalgia — and it's because Americans are lonely.

Joanne Joo for Insider

I'm an extrovert who realized working remotely was bad for my mental health. These 4 things help me combat loneliness.

Tech Insider
a woman works on a laptop while sitting in the grass
Melissa Petro.

Melissa Petro

How inflation and loneliness are killing Gen Z's dating game

Tech Insider : Economy, Economy
Some Gen Zers report moving away from expensive dating in search of other social activities.
Some Gen Zers report moving away from expensive dating in search of other social activities.

Getty Images

Big Tech made America lonely. Now it needs to fix the crisis it helped create.

Tech Insider : Economy
In a black glitchy abyss of floating glowing boxes full of lonely people on some form of technological device, two boxes float near each other towards connection.
Big Tech's obsession with feeding customers exactly what they want made Americans lonely. Now the industry has a chance to redeem itself.

Dadu Shin for Insider

Now the industry needs to help bring us back together

The rise of AI girlfriends is making male loneliness worse and risks ruining a generation of men, a professor says

Tech Insider
her joaquin phoenix
Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with an AI system in the 2013 film "Her."

Warner Bros. Pictures

Gen Z loneliness is so bad that some young adults are spending thousands trying to make friends through gym memberships and social clubs

Tech Insider : Economy
Margaux Duvall (left), Lillian Lema (center), Lynette Ban (right)
Margaux Duvall, Lillian Lema, and Lynette Ban (left to right) have all spent money in the search of new connections.

Margaux Duvall, Lillian Lema, Lynette Ban

I moved to Seattle for a high-paying tech job. It turned out to be the loneliest time of my life.

Tech Insider
A lone man cloaked in shadow stands with his back turned from the viewer. He looks at the city skyline of Seattle.
Alexander Nguyen (not pictured) moved to Seattle after he got a job offer from Amazon in 2020. Despite the $150,000 salary, he wishes he had stayed in New York.

Arantza Pena Popo/Insider

A 77-year-old talks to an AI-companion robot called ElliQ over a dozen times daily to combat her loneliness: 'It really is like having somebody else in here'

Tech Insider
older woman using elliq robot
A screenshot of a demonstration of an older woman using the ElliQ robot. Priscilla O'Kesson is not in this photo.

Intuition Robotics

America's broken housing market is making millennials and Gen Z lonelier

Tech Insider : Economy
A home amid a vast network of roads cut in the Mojave Desert, intended for a massive suburban paradise that was never built, in California City, California, approximately 100 miles north of Los Angeles.
A home amid a vast network of roads cut in the Mojave Desert, intended for a massive suburban paradise that was never built, in California City, California, approximately 100 miles north of Los Angeles.

Robyn Beck/Getty Images

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