Loneliness is often associated with older people. It is easy to imagine an eighty-five-year-old woman in an empty and silent house, having only the company of a radio or television. Her husband and many of her friends are deceased. For the most part, she begins and ends her days alone, knowing that tomorrow will be much the same.
However, a recent study conducted for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) shows that the condition is no longer limited to octogenarians. The study’s first sentence draws a dire picture. “AARP’s most recent study on loneliness shows that 4 in 10 U.S. adults age 45 and older are lonely, a significant increase from 35% in 2010 and 2018.” Surprisingly, the study indicates that loneliness is most prevalent among people in their forties and fifties. The numbers actually decrease as age increases. Men are more likely to be lonely than women.
The scientific study of the emotional, mental and physical health effects is still in its infancy. A recent advisory from the World Health Organization (WHO), an office of the United Nations, is titled “Loneliness and Isolation—The Hidden Threat to Global Health We Can No Longer Ignore.” The initial figures are dismal.
“Between 2014 and 2019, loneliness was associated with more than 871,000 deaths annually—equivalent to 100 deaths per hour. We now have irrefutable evidence that social health—our ability to form and maintain meaningful human connections—is just as essential to our well-being as physical and mental health.”
Emotional and Physical Consequences
A study in the National Institutes of Health’s “National Library of Medicine” is no less alarming.
“Rising concerns about social isolation and loneliness globally have highlighted the need for a greater understanding of their mental and physical health implications. Robust evidence documents social connection factors as independent predictors of mental and physical health, with some of the strongest evidence on mortality.”
Of course, the nature of loneliness varies greatly. Some people are lonely in a room crowded with acquaintances. Others yearn to be alone for long periods of time, during which they never feel ill effects. Nonetheless, loneliness is very real and affects both the body and the emotions. Dr. Crystal Wiley Cené is a medical professor at the University of California—San Diego. She contributed her insights to an article published by the American Heart Association.
“Over four decades of research has clearly demonstrated that social isolation and loneliness are both associated with adverse health outcomes…. There is strong evidence linking social isolation and loneliness with increased risk of worse heart and brain health in general…. Social isolation and loneliness are also associated with worse prognosis in individuals who already have coronary heart disease or stroke.”
Accelerating Causes
The AARP study, cited above, lists three reasons for the increase: declining social networks, technology and “life transitions.”
“Declining social network” is science-speak for the fact that most people have fewer friends than their parents and ancestors. Such a conclusion makes a lot of sense. In days of yore, most people found their friends in four places: church, neighborhood, work and school. In all four venues, many people meet far fewer people than previous generations did.
Churches have long been fertile ground for friendship. Striking up a conversation with a stranger at a church event usually results in a pleasant interaction with people with similar points of view. However, churches are not the social centers they once were. Before 1960, it was the rare individual who openly claimed to have no religion. However, in 2024, National Public Radio (NPR) cited a Pew Research study stating that “Religious ‘Nones’ are Now the Largest Single Group in the U.S.,” adding that twenty-eight percent of Americans claimed no religious affiliation. That number was up from sixteen percent in 2007.
Neighborhoods, Workplaces and Schools
Nor are modern people likely to meet friends amongst their neighbors. Through the fifties and early sixties, the social network in most neighborhoods was quite active. Such is no longer the case. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) recently cited a different Pew study. “Just 44 percent of Americans say they trust most or all of their neighbors—a decline from 52 percent a decade ago. Only 26 percent know most of their neighbors. And 12 percent report knowing none of them at all. These numbers…reveal a society growing more disconnected, fragmented, and cautious about those closest to home.”
Workplaces, too, have gone through a metamorphosis. Once, it was quite usual for dozens or hundreds of people to work together in the same offices, factories, warehouses, stores, etc. Today, that is far less likely. The nation is littered with closed factories. Computers replaced legions of bookkeepers, draftsmen and typists. COVID sparked a wave of people working from home. Corporate meetings take place over distance, and participants disperse by closing their laptops.
Of the four most common places to make friends, only schools retain most of their former ability to forge new relationships. However, then and now, few people carry many of those relationships into adulthood.
Technology’s Role
By this time, many readers will have already deduced the role that technology plays in many of these changes. However, one other technological effect is less obvious. Many people turn to their computers and phones to assuage loneliness. However, such self-treatment only exacerbates the problem.
At first, it might seem that limitless entertainment would limit the emotional depths of isolation. Perhaps, in small doses, that might be true. Escaping boredom by watching a short film on a topic of interest is a pleasant diversion. However, such practices quickly become habitual. Relations with other people can be frustrating, tiresome and exasperating. On the other hand, the device does not complain from overuse, repetition or obedience to the user’s whims. Such freedoms may be comforting, but they also contribute to the perils of isolation.
Deteriorating Social Fabric
The last of the AARP study’s three reasons for loneliness is also the least clear—life transitions. Of course, not all transitions cause loneliness. A budding friendship, a wedding, a new child, a vacation, the purchase of a home and a new job are all “transitions” that would work against isolation. Each connects one individual to others and works against loneliness.
However, separation, divorce, abortion, illicit romances, abandoning responsibilities and others of that type are also transitions. They tear people apart. Each sundered relationship adds to the isolation. Each creates distrust, and that distrust often manifests itself in other relationships. These destructive transitions are all more common than they were in previous generations. Society’s permissive attitudes that allow them also contribute to the current loneliness epidemic.
Those who remade society in the sixties and seventies promised a world of liberation and self-determination. About three decades later, the Internet’s promoters promised instant connections that would bring harmony and friendship to all people worldwide. Neither promise ever came close to being fulfilled. That would have been impossible, because they all overlooked the one source of perfect freedom and harmony—Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
First published on TFP.org.
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