Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is worried about our sad social lives.

Americans are burned out, disconnected, isolated and starved for time. Maybe it’s post-pandemic blues. Maybe it’s our smartphone addiction. Whatever the cause, it’s serious enough that Murthy has issued a formal advisory to the nation calling for action to address this “epidemic.”

Such advisories are typically reserved for the biggest health problems, and some have changed the course of public health — a seminal 1964 report on cigarettes or the 1986 warning on AIDS. Murthy’s made it his mission to place loneliness in that pantheon, with a report citing a growing body of evidence linking loneliness and its cousin isolation to a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression and anxiety, as well as suicide. The health risks from loneliness are as dangerous as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, the report warned.

Murthy has also taken his message about the power of friendship on the road with a cross-country tour aimed at a group not often associated with social isolation: college students. In eight states, he has hosted a rollicking festival aimed at pumping up the undergrads, and some older folks, albeit without the kegs.

“This is really one of the defining issues of our time,” Murthy said at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on a recent Monday evening, after dozens of New Yorkers in black puffer coats filtered into the stadium’s lobby, with armchairs and a piano nearby.

People dressed as dancing unicorns handed out prescriptions for five minutes of social connection. (Quantity: Endless. Refills: Daily.)

A drum beat sounded from the direction of the basketball court, and for a moment it seemed like the soft-spoken Murthy might have to compete with band practice. But before long, a drumline of bow-tied gentlemen appeared, threading through the folding chairs and revving up the crowd, who clapped along.

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