John Green is best known for his tearjerking young adult novels. But beyond the emotionally charged lives of two teens bound by more than their illnesses in his bestseller, The Fault in Our Stars, Green has become widely recognized for giving his curious audience a crash course in everything from history and philosophy to science and current events. He’s known to his over 2 million social media followers as an expert in centuries-old historical events, global health, and our modern technological landscape.
Green is able to connect with a broad audience because of his uncanny ability to understand the dark and complex realities of people—particularly young ones. And he has a message for them.
“I worry a lot that young people are affected by the terrible disease of loneliness at a scale that we haven’t seen before,” he tells Fortune.
With the rise in social media came a decline in mental health, and a global pandemic that shut down schools and isolated kids as they were coming of age only worsened things. In one recent analysis, a fourth of people ages 15 to 18 reported feeling lonely, which can exacerbate mental health issues. Dubbed the “anxious generation” by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, young adults today may be the loneliest group of all. With looming uncertainty about the future of work, AI, and the economy, Green has a simple lesson for young people.
“I think they should be reading more books,” Green says. “But I’m biased. That’s like asking a musician if people should listen to music.”
Nonetheless, he sees reading as the most significant character development tool for young people.
“My case for books is that they shrink the empathy gap,” Green says, “because when I read Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield isn’t my friend or my spouse or my anything, [but] he is as close as I can come to being someone else.”
Being socially isolated can block people from feeling empathy for others. In the latest annual World Happiness Report, a ranking of happiest countries in the world, the U.S. dropped out of the top 20, largely because of young Americans’ discontent because of social isolation and worsening mental health.
A key marker of happiness, per the report, is believing in the good of others. Lacking valuable social connections can make believing in the goodwill of others more challenging. Finding a way to bridge the empathy gap, as Green says, could encourage us to reach out to people, beyond the pages of a book.
“Through the process of imagining with clarity and sophistication what it’s like to be someone else, we both learn what it’s like to be ourselves, but we also learn what it’s like to be one of the 8 billion other people on this planet,” Green says.