Research shows that workplace loneliness hurts job performance. You can become a less effective worker as co-workers find you less approachable and stop collaborating.

So what do isolation and loneliness look like?

There’s no one definitive sign – for many people, it starts with being more socially hyper-vigilant and losing some social skills. You may start feeling disconnected from the people around you, not just your coworkers. In serious cases, workplace isolation can seep into your personal life and affect your relationship with your loved ones.

Feeling isolated can produce negative consequences on your emotional health, your productivity, and team performance. Exacerbating this is that for many people, there’s a stigma associated with isolation, which makes hard to talk about this topic.

New research from Harvard suggests that feelings of social isolation are on the rise. Those hardest hit are older teens and young adults. Young people are at the age where they are making critical decisions about their professional and personal lives and relationships, and this can add to the stress and sense of isolation.

Many young people who reported serious loneliness also said they felt as if no one “genuinely cared” about them. The same report also suggests that lonely people often feel they are reaching out or listening to other people more than other people are reaching out or listening to them. This can be self-defeating as people will then assume they’re being taken advantage of.