Live alone? You're not alone

Desperate for human contact, New Yorker Jeff Ragsdale posted flyers inviting people to call him. He signed them: "Jeff, One Lonely Guy." He has since fielded about 70,000 calls. (CBS)

 (CBS News) NO MAN IS AN ISLAND ... or so poet John Donne wrote nearly four centuries ago. What would he think if he could come back and see the isolated way so many of us live now? Here's Susan Spencer of "48 Hours":


For Greta Garbo, solitude was a mantra; for Henry David Thoreau, an ideal; for Howard Hughes, an obsession.

But for more and more Americans today, it's just reality.

"I would argue that the rise of living alone represents the greatest social change of the last 60 years that we have failed to name or identify," said NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg. "This is a transformation that has touched all of us, whether we live alone or it's just someone in our family or friendship circle who does."