The New York Times article featured several different service and organizations in the UK that are working to combat loneliness among the elderly. Although similar programs exist in the United States, the research and awareness of the topic in the UK is still much further ahead than it is in the U.S.
"In the U.S., there isn't much recognition in terms of public health initiatives or the average person recognizing that loneliness has to do with health," Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, told the New York Times. Her own research has also linked loneliness to deteriorating health.
John Lewis, a British retailer known for its heartwarming Christmas advertisements, partnered with Age UK, a charity for older people, to raise awareness of loneliness among the elderly, particularly during the holidays.
In the video, a young girl discovers with dismay that there's an old man all alone on the moon for Christmas. Determined to show him he's not alone, she sends some airborne Christmas gifts his way.
Statistics compiled in the UK have found that a million seniors go as long as a month without talking to anyone. The statistics in the United States are probably similarly shocking, Sr. Constance said.
"To think of an older person going a month without speaking to friends or family, that's pretty bad," she said.
Pope Francis would agree. The pontiff once called neglect of the elderly a "mortal sin" after visiting an elderly woman in August who hadn't seen her family since Christmas.
"It is a mortal sin to discard our elderly…The elderly are not aliens. We are them – in a short or in a long while we are inevitably them, even though we choose not to think about it," he said during a general audience in March 2015.
"Children who do not visit their elderly and ill parents have mortally sinned. Understand?" he added.
The Holy Father himself had a very close relationship with his grandmother when he was growing up, and has urged Catholics many times to not neglect the elderly or the sense of memory that they bring to their families and to society.
Pope Francis has said that "we don't have a sense of memory, of appreciation of a family history and family tradition, the things that used to bind the generations together in families," Sr. Constance said.
(Story continues below)
Subscribe to our daily newsletter
We've also lost a sense "of filial piety, that we do have a duty to one another in a family and especially to our elders," she added.
Another part of the problem can be that older people who don't know how to use new technologies get left out of the loop, Sr. Constance said. A family that stays in touch through a texting group may be unintentionally leaving out older folks who don't text.
But the blame lies not just with young people - it's a reciprocal problem, Sr. Constance noted.
"The older generation, relatively speaking, of baby boomers also hasn't nurtured bonds," she said.
"They've been much more independent and have had more disposable income and have kind of done their own thing, but when something happens and they become frail, they haven't really set up the networks themselves or those strong bonds, so I think it's really reciprocal...it's just kind of sad, it leaves us all a bit isolated."
Social isolation can also become a self-perpetuating problem. Studies show that, counter-intuitively, social isolation often causes people to go into a kind of defense mode, where rather than reaching out for the support they need, they instead close themselves off further from society.