Why We Are Lonely and What to Do About It

Loneliness is a bigger health threat than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to new research. Our subsistence ancestors likely did not suffer from a lack of companions. Why has solitude become such a threat? How might it be addressed?

Balancing Loneliness and Privacy

In the distant past, there would have been few complaints about loneliness, given the different levels of social networks. Indeed, every person in a community, including children, was up to speed on every detail of the lives of everyone else.

Temporary huts were made of materials like sticks, grass, and leaves that admitted sound. If there was a domestic squabble in one hut, everyone in the village heard it in real-time, reminiscent of today’s celebrities.

Instead of suffering from loneliness, our distant ancestors were oppressed by a lack of privacy. Today, these issues are reversed. We have more privacy in real life.

Yet, social media bring back the invasions of privacy that were typical of hunter-gatherer communities. They often do so without providing the countervailing benefit of a sense of belonging. Instead, they foster alienation. How did loneliness take over modern life?

The Loneliness of Urban Life

Being lonely in a place with many thousands of people may seem like a contradiction. Yet, cities often function as aggregations of relative strangers rather than functional communities.

The many people wandering around in a city are irrelevant if we have no social connection with them. Of course, migrants to cities may make many meaningful social connections. Even so, associations are often formed through accidental networks. These might be the people we work among, those who frequent a coffee shop, or members of a gym or sports club. Such connections are not made automatically. They require openness, initiative, and effort. So those who are most in need of social connection can fare poorly in an urban environment.

In general, cities are tough on functional social networks such as families, extended kin networks, and religious congregations. When new migrants relocate to a large city, they often leave close family and local communities hundreds of miles away. With a mobile workforce, local community networks fall away. There is also generational fracturing within extended families. Older members are generally left behind when younger people relocate for educational opportunities or employment.

Now that remote working has become a settled reality, young people may no longer be so gung-ho about abandoning family and community in search of career advancement. They can follow their ambitions without moving away from their established social networks and could be at less risk of loneliness.

When “Friends” Are Anything But

At present, most workers live a lifestyle of displacement, whether they are immigrants living in a foreign country or workers who migrate inside a country. Thus, hundreds of millions of Chinese workers who live in cities hail from the countryside, whence they return en masse during Chinese New Year when they visit relatives and neighbors left behind.

There are a lot of lonely people in cities. Many turn to social media in search of companionship with mixed results. Of course, most people now lead some of their lives online, whether they are lonely or not.

Still, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Loneliness, people who spend more time online are lonelier. So the online experience does not give them the sense of connection they desire. People who claim thousands of online “friends” are often chronically anxious, disconnected, and depressed. Perhaps they would reap better social dividends from being polite and kind to people they encounter in real life.

We may never knit together the “raveled sleeve” of extended families and communities, but a lack of intimate companions does not doom a person to loneliness.

People Who Don’t Need People

Not everyone needs constant companionship. This is not merely a question of how extroverted a person is. Rather, self-sufficiency reflects how someone leads their life. Busy people driven by a strong sense of external purpose are unlikely to suffer from loneliness. On the other hand, social media promote self-absorption and narcissism, which are a high road to alienation and loneliness.

Loneliness Essential Reads

Research Confirms That Loneliness Is Bad for Your Health

Encountering Loneliness: Which Condition Applies to You?

Whether they perfect their dance moves, get involved in political activism, or train service dogs, busy people are not going to suffer from isolation. Indeed, any activity that calls for an investment of time and effort helps us to feel connected to something outside ourselves. In this vein, anyone who cultivates a love of nature becomes a part of the natural world that is an endless source of peace, happiness, and connection.