Alone is not a synonym for lonely

As this article notes, there has been a rash of news articles positing a rise in societal loneliness. From Is there a loneliness epidemic? by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina. For those of you who rely on Betteridge's Law of Headlines, you will be pleased to know that it applies in this instance. Is there a loneliness epidemic? No.

This is just one more instance of newspapers, as mouthpieces for groups wanting money or wanting power, publishing claims which have little or no evidentiary basis. It is one thing to let people know that an advocacy group is making a claim. It is quite another to publish it so frequently and gin up debate among people with differing opinions and no facts.

MSM needs content and they need controversy and they are sufficiently without moral foundations that they will do just about anything for clicks. From the article.

The media seems to have agreed that rich countries are experiencing a ‘loneliness epidemic’. There are literally thousands of newspaper articles that use this exact expression.

What is the evidence for this? The word ‘epidemic’ suggests that things are getting much worse and loneliness is increasing rapidly. But does the data in fact show that societies are becoming lonelier?

Despite the popularity of the claim, there is surprisingly no empirical support for the fact that loneliness is increasing, let alone spreading at epidemic rates.

It is true that more people are living alone around the world. But loneliness and aloneness are not the same. As we explain in a companion post, spending time alone is not a good predictor of whether people feel lonely, or have weaker social support.

As we explain later, today’s adolescents in the US do not seem to be more likely to report feeling lonely than adolescents from a couple of decades ago; and similarly, today’s older adults in the US do not report higher loneliness than older adults in the past. Surveys covering older adults in other rich countries, including Finland, Germany, England and Sweden, point in the same direction – it’s not the case that loneliness is increasing across generations in these countries.1

Social connections – including contact with friends and family – are important for our health and emotional welfare, as well as for our material well-being. Loneliness is indeed an important problem, but it’s crucial to have a nuanced conversation based on facts. The headlines that claim we are witnessing a ‘loneliness epidemic’ are wrong and unhelpful.

Ortiz-Ospina then goes on to muster the evidence supporting his claim.

I do suspect that there is a deeper phenomenon going on which warrants exploration and discussion but for which we are inadequately prepared to have.

As the world becomes richer and more free, people are more able to make a range of choices which people simply could not make a century ago. People can better afford housing which separates them from others. People can choose to pair-bond or not. People can choose the nature and extent of their relationships. Housing is more affordable (other than a few cities with artificial constraints on supply) so you are not forced to live with others in order to afford shelter. Traditional family structures have eroded for everyone outside the top quintile, reducing the number of long term relationships. Communication and travel are so cheap that people can choose virtual or intermittent relationships over sustained relationships.

As Ortiz-Ospina notes, though, alone is not the same as lonely. As we make the transition to a condition where everyone can afford the degree of aloneness they wish, will that be greater or less than in the past and will there be an increase in loneliness across a lifetime? Fair question but it depends a lot on priors, calls in ideological debates, and is characterized by little agreement on definitions and a near total absence of empirical longitudinal robust data.