Loneliness
How much do we know about it and why it matters?
At this time of the year, leading up to Christmas and New Year, most of us are busy preparing for the biggest friends and family get-togethers of the year.
Retailers, fortified by endless social media platforms, have long trained us to equate celebration with consumption, happiness with shiny, new objects. A marriage between rampant capitalism and modern technology has seen to that. Their offspring, known as surveillance capitalism, has been thriving ever since—the most profitable union in the history of humankind. Possibly, the most destructive too, but that is something we might talk about some other time.
Today I’d like to talk about loneliness, about those who don’t have friends and/or family to share the season’s joys or sorrows.
According to findings from global surveys and meta-analyses published in several journals, including Psychological Bulletin, the number of people experiencing some form of loneliness has been steadily increasing in the last 45 years.
Almost 40 per cent of adults reported feeling lonely occasionally, while about 18% said they feel lonely very often or always.
Out of 8 billion of us, close to half feel lonely at least sometimes.
Highly developed countries fare worse than their poorer counterparts.
Americans seem to be the loneliest, as 52 per cent of Americans reported feeling lonely, while 47 per cent reported their relationship with others not being meaningful. Whopping 57 per cent of Americans reported eating all their meals alone, regardless of whether they are single or in a relationship.
In Europe, Londoners seem to be the loneliest, as 55 per cent of them said they feel lonely, making London the loneliest city in the world. In the UK, 14 per cent of the population reported feeling lonely all the time, while 36 per cent admitted to being too embarrassed to admit being lonely.
Social isolation has become a problem in Europe; some 75 million people have been identified as socially isolated.
In Australia, 62 per cent of young adults and 46 per cent of seniors reported being lonely. Around 55 per cent reported lacking companionship at least sometimes.
In Japan, around 541,000 people live as modern-day hermits, known as hikikomori.
It might surprise you to hear that younger generations are lonelier than middle-aged and elderly people.
Astonishingly 73 per cent of Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) feel lonely.
The suicide rate among those aged 10–24 has increased by 56 per cent between 2007 and 2017.
The numbers are similar for Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996), with the fear of loneliness being exceptionally high among millennial women — 42 per cent said they are more afraid of being lonely than having cancer.
Generation X’s (those born between 1965 and 1980) results show 22 per cent of X’ers said they have no close friends.
While a lonely old man was once an easy-to-use stereotype, the most recent research shows that loneliness is divided almost equally between men and women — 46.1 per cent of men feel lonely compared to 45.3 per cent of women.
All data indicates that people with disabilities, mental illnesses, or members of minority groups experience significantly more loneliness and social isolation. Otherness remains a challenge for mainstream humanity.
While the statistic looks rather grim, it must be acknowledged that feeling lonely is a part of the ordinary human experience. We have all felt it, at least occasionally. The creative amongst us seek solitude to let their imagination and creative energies flow uninterrupted.
However, solitude is not the same as loneliness.
Solitude is voluntary, while loneliness rarely is.
People who report feeling socially isolated and lonely for prolonged periods have little, if any, choice.
As a result, their health, both mental and physical, suffers.
Researchers have found that the impact of loneliness on mortality is similar to that of smoking fifteen cigarettes per day.
Across multiple studies, social isolation is consistently linked to chronic heart failure, coronary artery disease, and a weakened immune system.
Loneliness fuels drug and alcohol abuse, disordered eating, including anorexia and bulimia.
Chronically lonely people die, on average, fifteen years earlier than their peers.
Numerous studies have confirmed that loneliness has tripled during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even before the pandemic, researchers have shown a strong correlation between the prevalence of social media and an increase in social isolation and loneliness.
As of 2022, 3.96 billion people use some form of social media.
That is more than half of the world’s population.
The average person spends two and a half hours on social media each day.
Some 71 per cent of heavy social media users reported feelings of loneliness.
Despite having hundreds of friends on the social platforms, they reported trusting only 3 or 4 would support them in a crisis.
Some recent studies have found that reduced use of social media showed a significant reduction in loneliness, anxiety and depression.
However, it would be too easy to blame it all on social media or any one factor.
Instead, the real cause most likely stems from the combination of complex factors.
The first dates at the dawn of the industrial revolution.
When, for the first time in human history, the elderly or those unable to work were left behind to fend for themselves while the work-able population entered factories, mines and workshops. Often to perish inside them.
Even the term loneliness was not coined until around 1800. Prior to that, the closest word was oneliness, a word that, like solitude, originates in Latin solus, meaning alone.
Oneliness did not suggest any emotional lacking or suffering. On the contrary, it indicated one’s state of solitude necessary to contemplate God. As God was ever near, the person was never alone.
A couple of centuries later, loneliness not only implies emotional emptiness and lack of social connection but also shame.
In the world of endless likes and polished selfies, who will admit to being lonely? Yes, that’s right — not many, if anyone.
This is how the circle closes — the screens that keep us alone also shame us into remaining so.
Is it really an epidemic, then, as many are saying?
While the consistent increase in the number of people affected worldwide could be called an epidemic, calling it an epidemic is not helpful.
Not only because medical terminology reduces the issue to the purely medical realm but even more because it places the onus back on the lonely.
It suggests that something is wrong with those that have those feelings, and therefore they ought to seek professional (medical and psychiatric) help to address it.
While this logic fits neatly with the modern world’s worship of the individual, in reality, it pushes those already feeling marginalised and disenfranchised further into obscurity.
It does that by, on the one hand, soothing the society’s collective consciousness, since once the advice to visit the doctor(s) has been dispensed, the rest is up to the individual, and on the other by refusing to acknowledge real culprits:
industrialisation,
the growth of the consumer economy,
the diminishing influence of religion and
the rise in popularity of evolutionary biology.
Together, they have placed the individual on the high but lonely throne of all that matters. All that is. Replacing a society in which everyone has a place in the process.
This is not to say that I either advocate religion or romanticise pre-industrial times. Not at all.
Life was harsh then, and it is now. Only differently.
They, generally speaking, lived shorter, dirtier and more physically exhausting lives inside their communities.
We, also, generally speaking, live far longer, cleaner and less physically taxing lives (unless we count typing on the keyboards as physically demanding -:) inside our solitary rooms.
So, what might be a solution?
Various countries have been trying to find one for some decades to very little avail. Not only the number of lonely and isolated people does not show signs of shrinking, but it continues to climb.
By now, it seems clear that neither doctors nor psychiatrists, various self-improvement gurus even less, are of much help. On the contrary, as the number of experts increases, so does the number of lonely people.
Which, no doubt, is excellent for business. Just look at the cost of therapies, courses, retreats and the like. The cost is also why politicians talk about it every now and then — lonely people get sicker, and that costs.
So why, then, am I writing about it?
Because it is all I can do — try to raise awareness.
That there is neither shame nor fault in loneliness.
That human emotions are inseparable from their social context.
As this is my last article for the year, I’ll leave you with the knowledge that the word individualism appeared for the first time in the 1830s — around the same time, the word loneliness also appeared for the first time.
I wish you all the fortune of being surrounded by loving family and caring friends this and many more holiday seasons.
I also wish you remember those around you that might be alone. Even if they tell you they are doing just fine. Especially then.
