Introduction
In this post:
- We show you the frightening statistics from a recent study on loneliness conducted by the BBC Radio in collaboration with Wellcome Collection
- We outline 3 reasons why you may be feeling lonely.
- We outline the effects of chronic loneliness.
- We offer steps to counteract the effects of chronic loneliness.
Have you felt lonely over the past 12 months due to the Coronavirus pandemic? You're not alone.
Below is the search data from the past 5 years for the word "Loneliness" on Google Trends
Notice how, in February 2020, the trend dramatically rises due to periodic national lockdowns' adverse effects globally.
An anecdote
I want you to picture this scene.
You're alone at home during a period of lockdown. You're feeling very lonely, and your best friend is calling you on FaceTime.
You're standing with the phone vibrating in your hand, but strangely, you don't feel like answering and come up with some excuses to text her. "I'm not feeling well", or "I'm a little tired this evening. Can we rain check?". The phone goes silent.
Why would you do something like this? What sort of person reacts like this when they feel lonely, and their friend is trying to reach out?
Well, I would. This exact situation has occurred for me more times than I care to admit. I've often told myself:
- I'm an introvert, and people bother me.
- I'm not lonely. I'm alone out of choice.
- I'm driven and need to be alone to focus.
- Enduring loneliness is an invariably more positive experience that the self-derision I will inflict if I don't meet my own expectations.
- The trade-off for time with friends and family is productivity, and productivity will allow me to rise the dominance hierarchy.
As you're about to learn, I was wrong. I was lonely.
I am lonely.
Part 1: BBC's Loneliness Experiment
55,000 people took part in the BBC's Loneliness Experiment in collaboration with Wellcome Collection, making it the largest survey of its kind in the world.
Here's a summary of the key findings:
- Young people are the group who feel loneliest: 40% of 16 to 24-year-olds who took part told us they often or very often feel lonely, compared with 27% of over 75s. We saw higher levels of loneliness in young people across cultures, countries, and genders.
- People who feel lonely have more 'online only' Facebook friends.
- People who say they often feel lonely report poorer health
- People who feel discriminated against are more likely to feel lonely.
- A third of people often or very often feel lonely.
- People feel ashamed about feeling lonely.
- People who feel lonely have on average lower levels of trust in others.
- People said that dating is the least helpful solution suggested by others.
- 41% of people think loneliness can sometimes be a positive experience
- Only a third believe that loneliness is about being on your own
Findings showed that loneliness increased with individualism, decreased with age, and was more significant in men than in women.
Part 2: The Reasons We Feel Lonely
Two books have heavily influenced my understanding of loneliness:
- Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection by John Cacioppo
- Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari
Much of what I am about to unpack is from their writings, and I HIGHLY recommend you read these books.
Reason 1 - Social Media Does Not Compensate For Social Life.
Social media is a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it can be a way for us to connect with like-minded people we would otherwise never meet; On the other hand, it uses operant conditioning to command our attention. It has unquestionably expanded our locus of control externally to the broader world we see on our screens.
"A locus of control orientation is a belief about whether the outcomes of our actions are contingent on what we do (internal control orientation) or on events outside our personal control (external control orientation)" - Philip Zimbardo.
Studies have found that there is a low correlation between objective connection and perceived connection. Social Media has been proven not to compensate for Social Life.
"On average, we check our phones every 6 minutes. Teens send, on average, 100 texts per day and 42% of us have never turned off their phones, and never will." - Johann Hari.
We require a sense of mutual aid and protection in our "Tribe", which requires physical interaction and collaboration, not just Zoom calls and WhatsApp messages. To perceive connection, you must share meaningful experiences and emotion. It can only be a reciprocal relationship. Only two-way attention can alleviate the symptoms of loneliness.
"Loneliness isn't the physical absence of other people, he said—it's the sense that you're not sharing anything that matters with anyone else." - Johann Hari.
Reason 2 - Aversive Signals.
Don't know what an aversive signal is? Not to worry, neither did I until I read Cacioppo's work.
"Much like hunger or thirst. The pain and aversiveness of loneliness is part of an evolutionary, biological mechanism to warn us of threats and damage to our social body which we all need to survive and prosper." - John Cacioppo.
The survival of the human race depends on relatedness, connection and communication. Chronic loneliness is harmful, but short-term loneliness can be positive and necessary because it highlights the need for social connections. It reminds us that we need others to thrive. The individualism we are fed by western culture is far less critical to our health than maintaining our social status and our place in our tribe.
When we are forced into isolation, this means the feeling of loneliness can arise, and become chronic if not dealt with.
This is not to say that being alone determines loneliness. As referred to earlier, we must share mutual experiences to feel quality connections.
Reason 3 - Loneliness Can Be Contagious.
Cacioppo, from a study he conducted, suggests that loneliness may actually be contagious. In a 10-year study, researchers examined how loneliness spreads in social networks. The results indicated that people close to someone experiencing loneliness were 52% more likely to become lonely.
This is because chronic loneliness induces a self-preservation mechanism in humans and other social animals. The temporal-parietal junction, the part of the brain that controls empathy, theory of mind and the attentional control required to take someone else's point of view into account, is heavily impaired in lonely people's brains.
We lose our concern for others when we are chronically lonely as we are, in terms of our biology, working hard to ensure we survive. Our body imagines us as being ostracized from our tribe, alone in the wild and open to threats from predators. Under normal modern social dynamics, we could be perceived as being 'bad' people as we come across as defensive and overly self-concerned.
It must be said that much of what is triggered by social isolation is non-conscious. When we feel acutely isolated, we feel motivated to connect. What you don't consciously perceive when you become chronically lonely is that your brain experiences hypervigilance for social threats that introduce attentional and even memory biases regarding your social interactions. You notice facial cues in your peers, but become much more ineffective at discerning what these cues mean for you.
Everything looks like a threat.
Part 3: The Effects of Loneliness
Here are some of the mind-blowing effects of chronic loneliness.
- When you allow for all the other factors, you find that chronic loneliness increases the odds of early death by 20%. This is about the same effect as obesity, though obesity does not make you as miserable as loneliness.
- The brains of lonely people, identified under brain scans, allocate more significant visual-cortical activity to our environment's negative social cues. We become hypervigilant and continuously aware of potential threats.
- Loneliness increases morning cortisol levels, one of the bodies stress hormones, to prepare us for another day of self-preservation. Essentially, you're waking up stressed.
- Loneliness decreases the effectiveness of sleep. You can experience sleep fragmentation, meaning you have increased micro-awakenings (short periods of wakefulness during natural sleep cycles).
- Feeling lonely causes your baseline cortisol levels to absolutely soar—as much as some of the most disturbing things that can ever happen to you. Being deeply lonely seems to cause as much stress as being punched by a stranger.
"Becoming acutely lonely, the experiment found, was as stressful as experiencing a physical attack. It's worth repeating. Being deeply lonely seemed to cause as much stress as being punched by a stranger." - Johann Hari.
Part 4: What Can We Do About Feeling Lonely?
Much like exercise, humans need to exercise their social fitness. Think of communication, interaction and connection as a social muscle you need to develop. This takes time and practice.
Here are 8 things you can do over the coming weeks to help alleviate the feelings of loneliness.
- Recognize loneliness as an aversive signal and respond to it much like you would to thirst or hunger.
- Understand what loneliness does to the mind, body and our behaviour. Use what you now know to build an awareness of the signs of chronic loneliness and act upon that awareness.
- Respond to loneliness by pursuing quality connections. Studies show that a quality, meaningful relationship with as little as one individual is enough to significantly reduce loneliness symptoms.
- Share moments with others, in person as much as you can.
- Do someone a favour to promote reciprocity. Help someone in need, and this implicitly promotes feelings of kinship and gratitude.
- Avoid isolating habits and behaviours. If a friend asks you out for coffee, fight the urge to say no because you're "busy". Recognize the self-preservation impulses that loneliness creates.
- Find a moment where you feel the inclination to work solo and choose to collaborate.
- Share ideas and be open to what we think that separates us and what we have in common.
"Choosing to put aside work activates the ventral striatal regions of the brain which are steeped in dopamine receptors, evoking feelings of pleasure and happiness." - John Cacioppo.
A Final Note: EASE your way back into social connections.
Cacioppo developed the acronym EASE that I personally have been using in dealing with loneliness.
The first E stands for "extend yourself," but extend yourself safely. Do a little bit at a time.
The A is "have an action plan." Recognize that it's hard for you. Most people don't need to like you, and most people won't. So deal with that, it's not a judgment of you, many things are going on. Ask [other people] about themselves, get them talking about their interests.
The S is "seek collectives." People like similar others, people who have similar interests, activities, values. That makes it easier to find synergy.
And finally when you do those things, "Expect" the best. The reason for that is to try to counteract this hyper-vigilance for social threat.
Extend yourself.
Have an action plan.
Seek Collections.
Expect the best.
