Elvis was wrong and the latest ABS General Social Survey proves it.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics recently published data that made me put my coffee down. In 2025, only 50% of Australians feel that most people can be trusted.

Half. Ouch.

In 2019 it was 55%. It jumped to 61% in 2020 (that weird, briefly bonding moment when a global crisis somehow made us feel more connected). Since then it’s gone off a cliff. We are now below our pre-pandemic baseline on trust:

• Trust in the healthcare system dropped from 76% to 61%.

• Trust in the justice system from 63% to 52%.

• Trust in police from 79% to 69%.

All these indicators are down at the same time. As a business psychologist, I read data like this the way a cardiologist reads an ECG. And right now, it’s not looking great.

BUT WAIT! There's more...

When I pulled apart the full ABS General Social Survey, almost every measure of outward social behaviour was heading in the same direction.

• Formal volunteering: 30% in 2019, down to 23% in 2025.

• Unpaid support to people outside the household: 52% down to 45%.

• Weekly face-to-face contact with family and friends: still 15 percentage points below where it was before the pandemic. In 2025. Five years later.

• Cultural openness (i.e. the proportion of Australians who agree that a diverse society is a good thing) dropped from 81% to 75%.

When the ABS looked at personal support networks though (the close, intimate layer of people we have in our corner) the numbers held strong. At least 88% of Australians still have someone to confide in and 93% can get support in a crisis (phew - kind of).

Why we keep opting out

Nicholas Epley is a psychologist at the University of Chicago and he's spent years researching what happens when people are systematically less social than is actually good for them, because they consistently (and incorrectly) predict that reaching out won't be worth it.

In study after study, people expect that talking to a stranger, having a real conversation with a colleague, or making contact with someone they don't know well will be awkward or draining. So they opt out. BUT according to the science, they are wrong. The actual experience is warmer, more enjoyable, and more energising than the forecast said it would be.

He's tested this on trains, in waiting rooms, in workplaces and on buses with the same result. We are avoiding connection based on a faulty prediction. (and hey, this isn't new new - we often don't do the very things that we know are good for us... kale anyone?)

What to me makes the ABS data feel like a slow-moving emergency is that people who are lonely are more likely to misread social cues negatively, which makes them more likely to opt out of the very interactions that would help them feel less lonely. The withdrawal feeds itself. It compounds. <-- if Linkedin had a highlight function this would be in right canary yellow.

So we have a population already pulling back from community life. We’re trusting less, volunteering less, connecting less face-to-face - and a well-documented psychological mechanism that makes that pattern harder and harder to interrupt.

Aaaaaaaanndddd why should I care?

You might be reading this thinking: interesting, but what do I do with it? If you lead a team, run an organisation, or design how people work together, it means more than you think.

Research from Kim Cameron at the University of Michigan and Rob Cross at Babson College shows that every interaction either builds or drains the cognitive capacity of the people around us. Warm, genuine, mutually engaged interactions leave people with more to give (hello Amplifiers!!!). Transactional, dismissive, or crappy ones pull capacity away.

When the social environment outside of work is deteriorating, people are arriving at work with less relational reserve than they used to carry. The tank is lower before they even log on. That means how you interact with your people is not a "nice to have" leadership quality anymore. It matters more now than it did five years ago, especially because the world outside the office is not filling the tank the way it once did.

And Epley applies directly here too. Most people underestimate how much a genuine check-in will mean to a colleague. A deeper question about how someone's going. A meeting that starts with an actual human moment before you launch into the agenda. People predict it'll feel forced or like a waste of time. It wont - please do it anyway.

That layer is where leaders, facilitators, and anyone who brings people together can make a real difference through the small, consistent choice to actually connect in the moments that make up an ordinary Tuesday.

Practical things. Right now.

Take Epley's bet. Before you put your headphones in or let the small talk die, try a little MORE conversation (sorry Elvis). Your forecast is probably wrong. It will almost certainly be warmer than you're expecting.

Start meetings like a person. Two minutes of connection before you get into it is not a waste of time. It changes the quality of everything that comes after.

Notice the drift to business-only interactions. If your conversations with your team have narrowed to tasks and outputs, that's data. Connection is what makes people want to bring their best so make time for it.

Protect the accidental interactions. The five-minute conversation after the meeting ends. The coffee run someone else joins. The hallway catch-up. Stop looking at these as inefficiencies. They are the connective tissue.

The ABS data is a warning. Epley's research tells us why it's getting worse. So…what happens when you decide to be the exception to the trend?

93% of Australians can still show up for the people they love.

So the question isn't whether we're capable of connection. We are. The question is whether we're going to keep opting out of it.

You already know the answer.

© Copyright Evelina Bereni | All rights reserved | Brisbane, Australia.

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Evelina lives in Brisbane, Queensland but travels globally.