Excerpt from the article: "It turns out there’s also not much evidence to support a popular theory that the increasing secularization of Western societies — where religion is seen as a traditional route for people to regularly come together — is a major factor driving modern loneliness. Counterintuitively, says Hewings, “It would seem on a number of different surveys that levels of loneliness are lower in Northern and Western Europe than they are in Southern and Eastern Europe, which are generally a bit more religious.” Turning up at your local synagogue, church, mosque or temple of choice might well help by offering a ready-made network of social connections, if worship is where you find meaning — as highlighted in a recent report from the U.K.’s Parliamentary Group on Faith and Society — but at the level of society, religion itself, it seems, is no panacea."