loneliness essay conclusion

Loneliness Essay Example

Loneliness is a feeling that many people experience at one point or another. The impact of it on your life can vary greatly depending on the situation. This sample will explore the different types of loneliness, how to deal with them, and some tips for overcoming loneliness in general.

Essay Example On Loneliness

• Thesis Statement – Loneliness Essay
• Introduction – Loneliness Essay
• Main Body – Loneliness Essay
• Conclusion – Loneliness Essay

Thesis Statement – Loneliness Essay Loneliness is a consequence of being robbed of one’s freedom. It can be due to imprisonment, loss of liberty, or being discriminated against. Introduction – Loneliness Essay Loneliness is a social phenomenon that has been the subject of much research since time immemorial. Yet there still does not exist any solid explanation as to why some people are more prone to loneliness than others. This paper will seek to analyze this potentially debilitating condition from different perspectives. It will cover the relationship between loneliness and incarceration or loss of liberty; then it will proceed into discussing how emotions play a role in making us feel lonely; finally, it will look at how these feelings can affect our mental stability and overall well-being. Get Non-Plagiarized Custom Essay on Loneliness in USA Order Now Main Body – Loneliness Essay Loneliness is a universal feeling which has the ability to create its own culture within different societies. In detention facilities, there is a unique kind of loneliness that prevails between prisoners who are often divided into various categories and population groups. This has been described by Mandela as a consequence of being robbed of one’s freedom. The fact that it can be due to imprisonment, loss of liberty, or being discriminated against makes it even clearer why this isolation from other people occurs so frequently among detainees. In addition, when one spends time incarcerated in solitary confinement, they may become more experienced at coping with feelings of loneliness and despondency; however, these feelings do not tend to dissipate completely because living in an artificial environment cannot be compared with living out in the open. There is also a difference between feeling lonely and actually being alone; many individuals who do not feel social pressure, meaning that they are more than happy spending time on their own without any external stimulation, may still find themselves surrounded by people every day. Yet even this does not guarantee that one will escape feelings of isolation or rejection. Loneliness becomes an issue when it is chronic and experienced frequently, if only fleetingly. It can affect our psychological balance as well as our physical health because it usually initiates stress responses within the body which cause high blood pressure and prompt addiction to drugs or alcohol consumption. All these reasons may lead to decreased productivity and ultimately affect one’s ability to develop or maintain social connections. Buy Customized Essay on Loneliness At Cheapest Price Order Now Conclusion – Loneliness Essay Loneliness is a condition that we can’t always avoid, but it is something we should be aware of and try to limit. Thus, while the effects of loneliness on the individual may not be able to stimulate any significant changes in society, at least there will always remain one person more who understands what you are going through. Ultimately, it all comes down to empathy and sharing our own stories so that more people learn how to cope with this potentially dangerous emotional response. Hire USA Experts for Loneliness Essay Order Now

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This essay sample has given you some insights into the psychology of loneliness as well as suggestions for how to combat it in your own life.

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Loneliness Matters: A Theoretical and Empirical Review of Consequences and Mechanisms

Louise c. hawkley.

Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, 940 E. 57th St, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

John T. Cacioppo

Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

As a social species, humans rely on a safe, secure social surround to survive and thrive. Perceptions of social isolation, or loneliness, increase vigilance for threat and heighten feelings of vulnerability while also raising the desire to reconnect. Implicit hypervigilance for social threat alters psychological processes that influence physiological functioning, diminish sleep quality, and increase morbidity and mortality. The purpose of this paper is to review the features and consequences of loneliness within a comprehensive theoretical framework that informs interventions to reduce loneliness. We review physical and mental health consequences of loneliness, mechanisms for its effects, and effectiveness of extant interventions. Features of a loneliness regulatory loop are employed to explain cognitive, behavioral, and physiological consequences of loneliness and to discuss interventions to reduce loneliness. Loneliness is not simply being alone. Interventions to reduce loneliness and its health consequences may need to take into account its attentional, confirmatory, and memorial biases as well as its social and behavioral effects.

Introduction

Loneliness is a common experience; as many as 80% of those under 18 years of age and 40% of adults over 65 years of age report being lonely at least sometimes [ 1 – 3 ], with levels of loneliness gradually diminishing through the middle adult years, and then increasing in old age (i.e., ≥70 years) [ 2 ]. Loneliness is synonymous with perceived social isolation, not with objective social isolation. People can live relatively solitary lives and not feel lonely, and conversely, they can live an ostensibly rich social life and feel lonely nevertheless. Loneliness is defined as a distressing feeling that accompanies the perception that one’s social needs are not being met by the quantity or especially the quality of one’s social relationships [ 2 , 4 – 6 ]. Loneliness is typically measured by asking individuals to respond to items such as those on the frequently used UCLA Loneliness Scale [ 7 ]: “I feel isolated,” “There are people I can talk to,” and “I feel part of a group of friends.” The result is a continuum of scores that range from highly socially connected to highly lonely.

Each of us is capable of feeling lonely, and loneliness is an equal opportunity tenant for good reason. We have posited that loneliness is the social equivalent of physical pain, hunger, and thirst; the pain of social disconnection and the hunger and thirst for social connection motivate the maintenance and formation of social connections necessary for the survival of our genes [ 8 , 9 ]. Feelings of loneliness generally succeed in motivating connection or reconnection with others following geographic relocation or bereavement, for instance, thereby diminishing or abolishing feelings of social isolation. For as many as 15–30% of the general population, however, loneliness is a chronic state [ 10 , 11 ]. Left untended, loneliness has serious consequences for cognition, emotion, behavior, and health. Here, we review physical and mental health consequences of perceived social isolation and then introduce mechanisms for these outcomes in the context of a model that takes into consideration the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral characteristics of loneliness.

Loneliness Matters for Physical Health and Mortality

A growing body of longitudinal research indicates that loneliness predicts increased morbidity and mortality [ 12 – 19 ]. The effects of loneliness seem to accrue over time to accelerate physiological aging [ 20 ]. For instance, loneliness has been shown to exhibit a dose–response relationship with cardiovascular health risk in young adulthood [ 12 ]. The greater the number of measurement occasions at which participants were lonely (i.e., childhood, adolescence, and at 26 years of age), the greater their number of cardiovascular health risks (i.e., BMI, systolic blood pressure (SBP), total, and HDL cholesterol levels, glycated hemoglobin concentration, maximum oxygen consumption). Similarly, loneliness was associated with increased systolic blood pressure in a population-based sample of middle-aged adults [ 21 ], and a follow-up study of these same individuals showed that a persistent trait-like aspect of loneliness accelerated the rate of blood pressure increase over a 4-year follow-up period [ 22 ]. Loneliness accrual effects are also evident in a study of mortality in the Health and Retirement Study; all-cause mortality over a 4-year follow-up was predicted by loneliness, and the effect was greater in chronically than situationally lonely adults [ 17 ]. Penninx et al. [ 15 ] showed that loneliness predicted all-cause mortality during a 29-month follow-up after controlling for age, sex, chronic diseases, alcohol use, smoking, self-rated health, and functional limitations. Sugisawa et al. [ 18 ] also found a significant effect of loneliness on mortality over a 3-year period, and this effect was explained by chronic diseases, functional status, and self-rated health. Among women in the National Health and Nutrition Survey, chronic high frequency loneliness (>3 days/week at each of two measurement occasions about 8 years apart) was prospectively associated with incident coronary heart disease (CHD) over a 19-year follow-up in analyses that adjusted for age, race, socioeconomic status, marital status, and cardiovascular risk factors [ 19 ]. Depressive symptoms have been associated with loneliness and with adverse health outcomes, but loneliness continued to predict CHD in these women after also controlling for depressive symptoms. Finally, loneliness has also been shown to increase risk for cardiovascular mortality; individuals who reported often being lonely exhibited significantly greater risk than those who reported never being lonely [ 14 ]. In sum, feelings of loneliness mark increased risk for morbidity and mortality, a phenomenon that arguably reflects the social essence of our species.

Loneliness Matters for Mental Health and Cognitive Functioning

The impact of loneliness on cognition was assessed in a recent review of the literature [ 9 ]. Perhaps, the most striking finding in this literature is the breadth of emotional and cognitive processes and outcomes that seem susceptible to the influence of loneliness. Loneliness has been associated with personality disorders and psychoses [ 23 – 25 ], suicide [ 26 ], impaired cognitive performance and cognitive decline over time [ 27 – 29 ], increased risk of Alzheimer’s Disease [ 29 ], diminished executive control [ 30 , 31 ], and increases in depressive symptoms [ 32 – 35 ]. The causal nature of the association between loneliness and depressive symptoms appears to be reciprocal [ 32 ], but more recent analyses of five consecutive annual assessments of loneliness and depressive symptoms have shown that loneliness predicts increases in depressive symptoms over 1-year intervals, but depressive symptoms do not predict increases in loneliness over those same intervals [ 36 ]. In addition, experimental evidence, in which feelings of loneliness (and social connectedness) were hypnotically induced, indicates that loneliness not only increases depressive symptoms but also increases perceived stress, fear of negative evaluation, anxiety, and anger, and diminishes optimism and self-esteem [ 8 ]. These data suggest that a perceived sense of social connectedness serves as a scaffold for the self—damage the scaffold and the rest of the self begins to crumble.

A particularly devastating consequence of feeling socially isolated is cognitive decline and dementia. Feelings of loneliness at age 79 predicted “lifetime cognitive change” as indicated by lower IQ at age 79 adjusting for IQ at age 11, living arrangements at age 11 and at age 79, sex, marital status, and ideal level of social support [ 27 ]. This finding does not rule out a reverse causal direction; cognitive impairments may hamper social interactions, prompt social withdrawal, and thus lead to loneliness. Other studies, however, have indicated that loneliness is a precursor of cognitive decline. For instance, the cognitive functioning of 75–85-year-olds (as assessed by the Mini-Mental State Examination) did not differ as a function of loneliness at baseline but diminished to a greater extent among those high than low in loneliness over a 10-year follow-up [ 28 ]. In a prospective study by Wilson et al. [ 29 ], loneliness was inversely associated with performance on a battery of cognitive measures in a sample of 823 initially dementia-free older adults. Moreover, loneliness at baseline was associated with a faster decline in cognitive performance on most of these measures over a 4-year follow-up. This was not true of the converse: cognitive status at baseline did not predict changes in loneliness. In addition, incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (76 individuals) was predicted by degree of baseline loneliness after adjusting for age, sex, and education; those in the top decile of loneliness scores were 2.1 times as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those in the bottom decile of loneliness scores. Depressive symptoms had a modest effect on Alzheimer’s disease risk, but loneliness continued to exert a significant and much larger influence on Alzheimer’s disease than depressive symptoms when depressive symptoms were included in the model [ 29 ]. Overall, it appears that something about our sense of connectedness with others penetrates the physical organism and compromises the integrity of physical and mental health and well-being. What that “something” might be is the topic to which we next turn.

How Loneliness Matters: Mechanisms

The loneliness model.

Our model of loneliness [ 8 , 9 ] posits that perceived social isolation is tantamount to feeling unsafe, and this sets off implicit hypervigilance for (additional) social threat in the environment. Unconscious surveillance for social threat produces cognitive biases: relative to nonlonely people, lonely individuals see the social world as a more threatening place, expect more negative social interactions, and remember more negative social information. Negative social expectations tend to elicit behaviors from others that confirm the lonely persons’ expectations, thereby setting in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy in which lonely people actively distance themselves from would-be social partners even as they believe that the cause of the social distance is attributable to others and is beyond their own control [ 37 ]. This self-reinforcing loneliness loop is accompanied by feelings of hostility, stress, pessimism, anxiety, and low self-esteem [ 8 ] and represents a dispositional tendency that activates neurobiological and behavioral mechanisms that contribute to adverse health outcomes.

Health behaviors

One of the consequences of loneliness and implicit vigilance for social threat is a diminished capacity for self-regulation. The ability to regulate one’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior is critical to accomplish personal goals or to comply with social norms. Feeling socially isolated impairs the capacity to self-regulate, and these effects are so automatic as to seem outside of awareness. In a dichotic listening task, for instance, right-handed individuals quickly and automatically attend preferentially to the pre-potent right ear. Latency to respond to stimuli presented to the non-dominant ear can be enhanced, however, by instructing participants to attend to their left ear. Among young adults who were administered this task, the lonely and nonlonely groups did not differ in performance when directed to attend to their pre-potent right ear, but the lonely group performed significantly worse than the nonlonely group when directed to shift attention to their non-prepotent left ear [ 30 ]. In other words, automatic attentional processes may be unimpaired, but effortful attentional processes are compromised in lonely relative to socially connected individuals.

Of relevance for health is the capacity for self-regulation in the arena of lifestyle behaviors. Regulation of emotion can enhance the ability to regulate other self-control behaviors [ 38 ], as is evident from research showing that positive affect predicts increased physical activity [ 39 ]. In middle-aged and older adults, greater loneliness was associated with less effort applied to the maintenance and optimization of positive emotions [ 31 ]. Compromised regulation of emotion in lonely individuals explained their diminished likelihood of performing any physical activity, and loneliness also predicted a decrease in physical activity over time [ 31 ]. Physical activity is a well-known protective factor for physical health, mental health, and cognitive functioning [ 40 ], suggesting that poorer self-regulation may contribute to the greater health risk associated with loneliness via diminished likelihood of engaging in health-promoting behaviors. A related literature shows that loneliness is also a risk factor for obesity [ 41 ] and health-compromising behavior, including a greater propensity to abuse alcohol [ 42 ]. To the extent that self-regulation accounts for poorer health behaviors in lonely people, better health behaviors may be more easily accomplished in the actual or perceived company of others. Interestingly, animal research has shown that social isolation dampens the beneficial effects of exercise on neurogenesis [ 43 ], implying that health behaviors may better serve their purpose or have greater effect among those who feel socially connected than those who feel lonely. This hypothesis remains to be tested, but research on the restorative effects of sleep is consistent with this notion.

Countering the physiological effects of the challenge of daily emotional, cognitive, and behavioral experiences, sleep offers physiological restoration. Experimental sleep deprivation has adverse effects on cardiovascular functioning, inflammatory status, and metabolic risk factors [ 44 ]. In addition, short sleep duration has been associated with risk for hypertension [ 45 ], incident coronary artery calcification [ 46 ], and mortality [ 47 ].

What is less appreciated is that sleep quality may also be important in accomplishing sleep’s restorative effects. Nonrestorative sleep (i.e., sleep that is non-refreshing despite normal sleep duration) results in daytime impairments such as physical and intellectual fatigue, role impairments, and cognitive and memory problems [ 48 ]. We have noted that loneliness heightens feelings of vulnerability and unconscious vigilance for social threat, implicit cognitions that are antithetical to relaxation and sound sleep. Indeed, loneliness and poor quality social relationships have been associated with self-reported poor sleep quality and daytime dysfunction (i.e., low energy, fatigue), but not with sleep duration [ 49 – 52 ]. In young adults, greater daytime dysfunction, a marker of poor sleep quality, was accompanied by more nightly micro-awakenings, an objective index of sleep continuity obtained from Sleep-Caps worn by participants during one night in the hospital and seven nights in their own beds at home [ 53 ]. The conjunction of daytime dysfunction and micro-awakenings is consistent with polysomnography studies showing a conjunction, essentially an equivalence, between subjective sleep quality and sleep continuity [ 54 ], and substantiates the hypothesis that loneliness impairs sleep quality.

In an extension of these findings, loneliness was associated with greater daytime dysfunction in a 3-day diary study of middle-age adults, an association that was independent of age, gender, race/ethnicity, household income, health behaviors, BMI, chronic health conditions, daily illness symptom severity, and related feelings of stress, hostility, poor social support, and depressive symptoms. Cross-lagged panel analyses of the three consecutive days indicated potentially reciprocal causal roles for loneliness and daytime dysfunction: lonely feelings predicted daytime dysfunction the following day, and daytime dysfunction exerted a small but significant effect on lonely feelings the following day [ 55 ], effects that were independent of sleep duration. In other words, the same amount of sleep is less salubrious in individuals who feel more socially isolated and, ironically, less salubrious sleep feeds forward to further exacerbate feelings of social isolation. This recursive loop operates outside of consciousness and speaks to the relative impenetrability of loneliness to intervention.

Physiological functioning

The association between loneliness and cardiovascular disease and mortality [ 13 , 14 , 19 ] may have its roots in physiological changes that begin early in life. As noted earlier, chronic social isolation, rejection, and/or feelings of loneliness in early childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood cumulated in a dose–response fashion to predict cardiovascular health risk factors in young adulthood (26 years old), including elevated blood pressure [ 12 ]. In our study of young adults, loneliness was associated with elevated levels of total peripheral resistance (TPR [ 49 , 56 ]). TPR is the primary determinant of SBP until at least 50 years of age [ 57 ], which suggests that loneliness-related elevations in TPR in early to middle-adulthood may lead to higher blood pressure in middle and older age. Consistent with this hypothesis, loneliness was associated with elevated SBP in an elderly convenience sample [ 49 ], and in a population-based sample of 50–68-year-old adults in the Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study [ 21 ]. The association between loneliness and elevated SBP was exaggerated in older relative to younger lonely adults in this sample [ 21 ], suggesting an accelerated physiological decline in lonely relative to nonlonely individuals. Our recent study of loneliness and SBP in these same individuals over five annual assessments supported this hypothesis. Short-term (i.e., 1 year) fluctuations in loneliness were not significant predictors of SBP changes over 1-year intervals, but a trait-like component of loneliness present at study onset contributed to greater increases in SBP over 2-, 3-, and 4-year intervals [ 22 ]. These increases were cumulative such that higher initial levels of loneliness were associated with greater increases in SBP over a 4-year period. The prospective effect of loneliness on SBP was independent of age, gender, race/ethnicity, cardiovascular risk factors, medications, health conditions, and the effects of depressive symptoms, social support, perceived stress, and hostility [ 22 ]. Elevated SBP is a well-known risk factor for chronic cardiovascular disease, and these data suggest that the effects of loneliness accrue to accelerate movement along a trajectory toward serious health consequences [ 20 ].

The physiological determinants responsible for the cumulative effect of loneliness on blood pressure have yet to be elucidated. TPR plays a critical role in determining SBP in early to mid-adulthood, but other mechanisms come into play with increasing age. Candidate mechanisms include age-related changes in vascular physiology, including increased arterial stiffness [ 58 ], diminished endothelial cell release of nitric oxide, enhanced vascular responsivity to endothelial constriction factors, increases in circulating catecholamines, and attenuated vasodilator responses to circulating epinephrine due to decreased beta-adrenergic sensitivity in vascular smooth muscle [ 59 – 61 ]. In turn, many of these mechanisms are influenced by lifestyle factors such as diet, physical inactivity, and obesity—factors that alter blood lipids and inflammatory processes that have known consequences for vascular health and functioning [ 62 , 63 ].

Neuroendocrine Effects

Changes in TPR levels are themselves influenced by a variety of physiological processes, including activity of the autonomic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenocortical (HPA) axis. The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system plays a major role in maintaining basal vascular tone and TPR [ 64 , 65 ] and elevated sympathetic tone is responsible for the development and maintenance of many forms of hypertension [ 66 ]. To date, loneliness has not been shown to correlate with SNS activity at the myocardium (i.e., pre-ejection period [ 21 , 56 ]) but was associated with a greater concentration of epinephrine in overnight urine samples in a middle-aged and older adult sample [ 21 ]. At high concentrations, circulating epinephrine binds α-1 receptors on vascular smooth muscle cells to elicit vasoconstriction and could thereby serve as a mechanism for increased SBP in lonely individuals.

Activation of the HPA axis involves a cascade of signals that results in release of ACTH from the pituitary and cortisol from the adrenal cortex. Vascular integrity and functioning are beholden, in part, to well-regulated activity of the HPA axis. Dysregulation of the HPA axis contributes to inflammatory processes that play a role in hypertension, atherosclerosis, and coronary heart disease [ 67 – 69 ]. Loneliness has been associated with urinary excretion of significantly higher concentrations of cortisol [ 70 ], and, in more recent studies, with higher levels of salivary or plasma cortisol [ 71 , 72 ]. Pressman et al. [ 72 ] found that loneliness was associated with higher early morning and late night levels of circulating cortisol in young adult university students, and Steptoe et al. [ 71 ] found that chronically high levels of trait loneliness in middle-aged adults (M=52.4 years) predicted greater increases in salivary cortisol during the first 30 min after awakening (i.e., cortisol awakening response) such that the cortisol awakening response in individuals in the highest loneliness tertile was 21% greater than that in the lowest tertile. In our study of middle-aged and older adults, day-today fluctuations in feelings of loneliness were associated with individual differences in the cortisol awakening response. For this study, diary reports of daily psychosocial, emotional, and physical states were completed at bedtime on each of three consecutive days, and salivary cortisol levels were measured at wakeup, 30 min after awakening, and at bedtime each day. Parallel multilevel causal models revealed that prior-day feelings of loneliness and related feelings of sadness, threat, and lack of control were associated with a higher cortisol awakening response the next day, but morning cortisol awakening response did not predict experiences of these psychosocial states later the same day [ 73 ]. Social evaluative threat is known to be a potent elicitor of cortisol [ 74 ], and our theory that loneliness is characterized by chronic threat of and hypervigilance for negative social evaluation [ 9 ] is consistent with the finding that loneliness predicts increased cortisol awakening response. The relevance of the association between loneliness and HPA regulation is particularly noteworthy given recent evidence that loneliness-related alterations in HPA activity may occur at the level of the gene, a topic to which we turn next.

Gene Effects

Cortisol regulates a wide variety of physiological processes via nuclear hormone receptor-mediated control of gene transcription. Cortisol activation of the glucocorticoid receptor, for instance, exerts broad anti-inflammatory effects by inhibiting pro-inflammatory signaling pathways. Given that loneliness is associated with elevated cortisol levels, loneliness might be expected to reduce risk for inflammatory diseases. However, as we have noted above, feelings of loneliness and social isolation are associated with increased risk for inflammatory disease. This finding may be attributable to impaired glucocorticoid receptor-mediated signal transduction; failure of the cellular genome to “hear” the anti-inflammatory signal sent by circulating glucocorticoids permits inflammatory processes to continue relatively unchecked. We found evidence consistent with glucocorticoid insensitivity in our examination of gene expression rates in chronically lonely versus socially connected older adults [ 75 ]. Genome-wide microarray analyses revealed that 209 transcripts, representing 144 distinct genes, were differentially expressed in these two groups. Markers of immune activation and inflammation (e.g., pro-inflammatory cytokines and inflammatory mediators) were over-expressed in genes of the lonely relative to the socially connected group (37% of the 209 differentially expressed transcripts). Markers of cell cycle inhibitors and an inhibitor of the potent pro-inflammatory NF–κB transcript were under-expressed in genes of the lonely relative to the socially connected group (63% of the differentially expressed transcripts). The net functional implication of the differential gene transcription favored increased cell cycling and inflammation in the lonely group [ 75 ].

Subsequent bioinformatic analyses indicated that loneliness-associated differences in gene expression could be attributable to increased activity of the NF–κB transcription factor. NF–κB is known to up-regulate inflammation-related genes, and its activity is antagonized by the glucocorticoid receptor. Bioinformatic analyses also indicated a possible decrease in glucocorticoid receptor-mediated transcription in the lonely group, despite the fact that there were no group differences in circulating glucocorticoid levels. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that adverse social conditions result in functional desensitization of the glucocorticoid receptor, which permits increased NF–κB activity and thereby induces a pro-inflammatory bias in gene expression. Group differences in NF–κB/glucocorticoid receptor-mediated transcription activity were not attributable to objective indices of social isolation, nor were they explained by demographic, psychosocial (i.e., perceived stress, depression, hostility), or medical risk factors [ 75 ]. These results suggest that feelings of loneliness may exert a unique transcriptional influence that has potential relevance for health.

In an extension of this work, a recent study showed that feelings of social isolation were associated with a proxy measure of functional glucocorticoid insensitivity [ 76 ]. The composition of the leukocyte population in circulation is subject to the regulatory influence of glucocorticoids; high cortisol levels increase circulating concentrations of neutrophils and simultaneously decrease concentrations of lymphocytes and monocytes. In a study of older Taiwanese adults, this relationship was reflected in a positive correlation between cortisol levels and the ratio of neutrophil percentages relative to lymphocyte or monocyte percentages. However, in lonely individuals, this correlation was attenuated and nonsignificant, consistent with a diminished effect of cortisol at the level of leukocytes.

The precise molecular site of glucocorticoid insensitivity in the pro-inflammatory transcription cascade has yet to be identified, and additional longitudinal and experimental research are needed to determine the degree to which chronic feelings of social isolation play a causal role in differential gene expression. However, the association between subjective social isolation and gene expression corresponds well to gene expression differences in animal models of social isolation (e.g., [ 77 – 79 ]), suggesting that a subjective sense of social connectedness is important for genomic expression and normal immunoregulation in humans. Impaired transcription of glucocorticoid response genes and increased activity of pro-inflammatory transcription control pathways provide a functional genomic explanation for elevated risk of inflammatory disease in individuals who experience chronically high levels of loneliness.

Immune Functioning

Loneliness differences in immunoregulation extend beyond inflammation processes. Loneliness has been associated with impaired cellular immunity as reflected in lower natural killer (NK) cell activity and higher antibody titers to the Epstein Barr Virus and human herpes viruses [ 70 , 80 – 82 ]. In addition, loneliness among middle-age adults has been associated with a smaller increase in NK cell numbers in response to the acute stress of a Stroop task and a mirror tracing task [ 71 ]. In young adults, loneliness was associated with poorer antibody response to a component of the flu vaccine [ 72 ], suggesting that the humoral immune response may also be impaired in lonely individuals. Among HIV-positive men without AIDS, loneliness was associated with a lower count of CD4 T-lymphocytes in one study [ 83 ] but was not associated with the CD4 count in another study [ 84 ]. However, in the latter study, loneliness predicted a slower rate of decline in levels of CD4 T-lymphocytes over a 3-year period [ 84 ]. These data suggest that loneliness protects against disease progression, but no association was observed between loneliness and time to AIDS diagnosis or AIDS-related mortality [ 84 ]. Additional research is needed to examine the role of loneliness chronicity, age, life stress context, genetic predispositions, and interactions among these factors to determine when and how loneliness operates to impair immune functioning.

Future Loneliness Matters

Interventions for loneliness.

Six qualitative reviews of the loneliness intervention literature have been published since 1984 [ 85 – 90 ], and all explicitly or implicitly addressed four main types of interventions: (1) enhancing social skills, (2) providing social support, (3) increasing opportunities for social interaction, and (4) addressing maladaptive social cognition. All but one of these reviews concluded that loneliness interventions have met with success, particularly interventions which targeted opportunities for social interaction. Findlay [ 87 ] was more cautious in his review, noting that only six of the 17 intervention studies in his review employed a randomized group comparison design, with the remaining 11 studies subject to the shortcomings and flaws of pre-post and nonrandomized group comparison designs.

We recently completed a meta-analysis of loneliness intervention studies published between 1970 and September 2009 to test the magnitude of the intervention effects within each type of study design and to determine whether the intervention target moderated effect sizes (Masi et al., unpublished). Of the 50 studies eligible for inclusion in the meta-analysis, 12 were pre-post studies, 18 were non-randomized group comparison studies, and 20 were randomized group comparison studies. Effect sizes were significantly different from zero within each study design group, but randomized group comparison studies produced the smallest effect overall (pre-post=−0.37, 95% CI −.55, −.18; non-randomized control=−0.46, 95% CI −0.72, −0.20; randomized control=−0.20, 95% CI −0.32, −0.08).

Our model of loneliness holds that implicit hypervigilance for social threat exerts a powerful influence on perceptions, cognitions, and behaviors, and that loneliness may be diminished by reducing automatic perceptual and cognitive biases that favor over-attention to negative social information in the environment. Accordingly, we posited that interventions that targeted maladaptive social cognition (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy that involved training to identify automatic negative thoughts and look for disconfirming evidence, to decrease biased cognitions, and/or to reframe perceptions of loneliness and personal control) would be more effective than interventions that targeted social support, social skills, or social access. Moderational analyses of the randomized group comparison studies supported our hypothesis: the effect size for social cognition interventions (−0.60, 95% CI −0.96, −0.23, N = 4) was significantly larger than the effect size for social support (−0.16, 95% CI −0.27, −0.06, N =12), social skills (0.02, 95% CI −0.24, 0.28, N =2), and social access (−0.06, 95% CI −0.35, 0.22, N =2); the latter three types of interventions did not differ significantly from each other. The results for social cognitive therapy are promising, but this intervention type appears not to have been widely employed to date relative to other types of loneliness therapy. Moreover, existing social cognitive therapies have had a small effect overall (0.20) relative to the meta-analytic mean effect of over 300 other interventions in the social and behavioral domains (0.50) [ 91 ]. A social cognitive approach to loneliness reduction outlined in a recent book [ 92 ] may encourage therapists to develop a treatment that focuses on the specific affective, cognitive, and behavioral propensities that afflict lonely individuals.

Implications for Health

Reducing feelings of loneliness and enhancing a sense of connectedness and social adhesion are laudable goals in their own right, but a critical question is whether modifying perceptions of social isolation or connectedness have any impact on health. VanderWeele et al. (unpublished) recently examined the reduction in depressive symptoms that could be expected if loneliness were successfully reduced and found there would be significant benefits that would accrue for as long as two years following the intervention. Would a successful intervention to lower loneliness produce corresponding benefits in physiological mechanisms and physical health outcomes? The only extant data to address this question comes from a recent study in which 235 lonely home-dwelling older adults (>74 years) were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group. In the treatment arm of the study, closed small groups of seven to eight individuals met with two professional facilitators once a week for 3 months to participate in group activities in art, exercise, or therapeutic writing. The control group continued to receive usual community care. Relative to the control group, individuals in the treatment group became more socially active, found new friends, and experienced an increase in feeling needed [ 93 ]. This was accompanied by a significant improvement in self-rated health, fewer health care services and lower costs, and greater survival at 2-year follow-up [ 94 ]. Feelings of loneliness did not differ between the groups, however [ 93 ], indicating that changes in loneliness were not responsible for improvements in health. According to our theory of loneliness, the interventions targeted by the treatment study would not be expected to influence loneliness dramatically because they fail to address the hypervigilance to social threat and the related cognitive biases that characterize lonely individuals. That is, group activities such as those introduced in this intervention provide new social opportunities but do not alter how individuals approach and think about their social relationships more generally. An intervention study of loneliness and health has yet to be designed that addresses the maladaptive social cognitions that make loneliness the health risk factor it increasingly appears to be. Beyond that, additional research is needed to determine the mechanisms through which successful loneliness interventions enhance health and survival, and to examine whether the type of loneliness intervention moderates its health benefits.

Conclusions

Human beings are thoroughly social creatures. Indeed, human survival in difficult physical environments seems to have selected for social group living [ 95 ]. Consider that the reproductive success of the human species hinges on offspring surviving to reproductive age. Social connections with a mate, a family, and a tribe foster social affiliative behaviors (e.g., altruism, cooperation) that enhance the likelihood that utterly dependent offspring reach reproductive age, and connections with others at the individual and collective levels improve our chances of survival in difficult or hostile environments. These behaviors co-evolved with supporting genetic, neural, and hormonal mechanisms to ensure that humans survived, reproduced, and cared for offspring sufficiently long that they, too, could reproduce [ 96 – 98 ]. Human sociality is prominent even in contemporary individualistic societies. Almost 80% of our waking hours are spent with others, and on average, time spent with friends, relatives, spouse, children, and coworkers is rated more inherently rewarding than time spent alone [ 99 , 100 ]. Humans are such meaning-making creatures that we perceive social relationships where no objectifiable relationship exists (e.g., between author and reader, between an individual and God) or where no reciprocity is possible (e.g., in parasocial relationships with television characters). Conversely, we perceive social isolation when social opportunities and relationships do exist but we lack the capacity to harness the power of social connectedness in everyday life. Chronic perceived isolation (i.e., loneliness) is characterized by impairments in attention, cognition, affect, and behavior that take a toll on morbidity and mortality through their impact on genetic, neural, and hormonal mechanisms that evolved as part and parcel of what it means to be human. Future interventions to alleviate the health burden of loneliness will do well to take into account our evolutionary design as a social species.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Grant R01-AG036433-01 and R01-AG034052 from the National Institute on Aging and by the John Templeton Foundation.

Contributor Information

Louise C. Hawkley, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, 940 E. 57th St, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.

John T. Cacioppo, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

Paris, 1951. Photo by Elliot Erwitt/Magnum

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Only 5% of students engaged in ed-tech learning, how to write a conclusion for a research paper, 105-year-old woman finally receives master’s degree from stanford, the job search for new college graduates is “not giving”, reports show, loneliness and its effects essay sample, example.

Everyone probably knows the feeling of isolation, when the entire world seems to be behind a glass wall: one can see people on the other side, interact and talk to them, live a more or less normal life—but feel alone and forgotten somewhere deep inside. In a world where communication is the new god, where extroverted behaviors are deemed healthy and normal, and where everything calls a person to belong to a certain group, being and feeling alone often seems wrong. There is nothing bad in needing solitude; from time to time, all of us need to spend some time on our own. However, solitude is rather a voluntary choice; when this condition becomes chronic and undesired, when a person feels the impossibility of establishing contact with others, this is already something many people around the world fear strongly: this is loneliness.

What exactly is loneliness? A more narrow definition suggests that loneliness is the condition when a person is not surrounded by other people, spends most of his or her time alone, and maintains little-to-no social contact. However, anyone who had at least once experienced the condition of loneliness knows that it is possible to be surrounded by friends or family, stay in the thick of things, and still feel isolated. In fact, the statistics shows about 60% of people who feel lonely are married, which is a good illustration of the thesis that loneliness does not depend on the environment, that the amount and variety of social connections and\or relationships do not necessarily save us from it. (Psychology Today).

A better understanding of loneliness can be achieved from the analysis of the needs and desires standing behind it—or, to be precise, the impossibility to satisfy these needs. According to Baumeister and Leary, every person has a basic need to belong to a certain group; this need is as significant and natural as the need to eat, to sleep, or to feel safe. However, simply belonging on its own does not satisfy the need: it is important that a person can form strong, close, and stable interpersonal relationships, and maintain them: only in this case the sense of belonging will be full. This makes sense even from the evolutionary point of view: staying together with other people was a guarantee of physical survival in ancient times. Continuing the parallel between emotional and physical (or basic) needs, our bodies are often wiser than our minds: when there is a lack or a surplus of something, our bodies react appropriately. Sensations (such as hunger, heat, and so on) and emotions are the signals our bodies send to our minds in order to alert them about these shortages and surpluses. Respectively, loneliness is an emotion which signals that the need of belonging is not satisfied, or that we are not getting the relationships (or the quality of already existing relationships) that we want (Web of Loneliness). This often seems irrational: for example, a person can have a lot of friends and see them often, he or she can be married and have children, have no problems with colleagues at work—everything is seemingly fine, but the sense of loneliness is still there, and it is important to understand why it is present, what is lacking.

Being in strong and close relationships affects our mental health beneficially; being alone for a long period of time can lead to a number of negative consequences, both on mental and physiological levels. In particular, loneliness can lead to depression (which is a dangerous mental condition on its own), a feeling of hopelessness, low self-esteem, an impaired ability for social interactions and work, suicidal tendencies, poor sleep, the sense of defeat, and helplessness. These sensations form a vicious circle—nurturing each other, they aggravate the situation of a lonely person, preventing him or her from getting out of this span on his or her own. Not only the emotional sphere, but also bodily functions are affected by loneliness. Studies show that lonely people face cardiovascular diseases more frequently than those enjoying strong and stable relationships with other people; other effects include the loss of weight, hormonal imbalances, the inhibition of the immune system, low resistance to infections and inflammations, dementia (in old age), and the degradation of bones and muscle tissue (The Doctor’s Tablet). All this does not mean that a person starts experiencing all these negative effects every time he or she feels lonely; however, these effects accumulate during prolonged isolation, “chronic” loneliness; therefore, it is important to not try to deal with this condition on one’s own, and seek professional help.

In fact, there are many effective ways to treat loneliness. Many people think that it is enough to increase the amount of social contacts, go out more often, and loneliness will be dealt with. However, loneliness is more about a person’s ability to form close relationships and bond with others, rather than about how often one is exposed to other people. Similar to other negative mental conditions, the first important step is to let yourself feel loneliness, and admit that you would like to live differently than you do. People often try to overpower their loneliness; they either tend to not treat it as something significant, considering it to be a weakness, or even deny that they are feeling lonely. When the problem is accepted and defined, it is recommended to start attending local psychotherapy sessions; cognitive-behavioral therapy usually provides solid results in treating loneliness, although other psychology schools, such as gestalt therapy can also be efficient, try finding what suits you the best. If you cannot afford attending a psychotherapist, consider utilizing a variety of relaxation and stress-relief techniques such as meditation, muscle relaxation training, guided mental imagery, or comforting self-talk. Pet therapy can be helpful as well; in fact, many people intuitively feel the need to have a living being nearby, whom they would be able to take care of, so owning a dog, cat, bird, or even a lizard can be a nice way to cope with loneliness (Psychologist Anywhere, Anytime). In many western countries, especially in the United States, it is extremely popular to prescribe medicine in order to deal with mental conditions; however, it is important to remember that loneliness is rather an emotional condition, not a biochemical one, so if you decide to take pills, it might help you inhibit unpleasant and painful feelings, but it will not solve your problem. Pills might be helpful if you are already suffering from depression as a result of loneliness—and even in this case, you should consider going to psychotherapy sessions.

Loneliness is not the same as solitude. The latter is a voluntary act of isolation from a society in order to refresh oneself, sort out one’s thoughts, and take a break from intense social interactions. Loneliness, in its turn, is a chronic and undesired condition when a person is unable (due to a number of reasons) to establish and maintain contact and close, stable relationships with surrounding people. Prolonged loneliness can be dangerous, since it can cause a variety of emotional and physiological problems. However, the good news is that loneliness can be treated effectively, mostly with the help of a professional psychotherapist.

Writing an expository essay is an interesting task. So, don’t skip on the opportunity to take up this challenge. However, be prepared to do some research and analysis of the chosen topic. In case you face some struggles while writing, don’t hesitate to check out assignment writing services . There, you can find assistance that will set you on the right path with your expository essay.

Works Cited

“What is Loneliness?” Web of Loneliness. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 July 2017. <http://www.webofloneliness.com/what-is-loneliness.html>

Winch, Guy. “10 Surprising Facts About Loneliness.” Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, 21 Oct. 2014. Web. 03 July 2017. <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201410/10-surprising-facts-about-loneliness>

Kennedy, Gary J. “How Loneliness Affects the Mind and Body.” The Doctor’s Tablet. N.p., 07 May 2015. Web. 03 July 2017. <http://blogs.einstein.yu.edu/how-loneliness-affects-the-mind-and-body/>

“Loneliness and the Fear of Being Alone.” Psychologist Anywhere, Anytime. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 July 2017. <http://www.psychologistanywhereanytime.com/relationships_psychologist/psychologist_loneliness.htm>

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The History of Loneliness

By Jill Lepore

The female chimpanzee at the Philadelphia Zoological Garden died of complications from a cold early in the morning of December 27, 1878. “Miss Chimpanzee,” according to news reports, died “while receiving the attentions of her companion.” Both she and that companion, a four-year-old male, had been born near the Gabon River, in West Africa; they had arrived in Philadelphia in April, together. “These Apes can be captured only when young,” the zoo superintendent, Arthur E. Brown, explained, and they are generally taken only one or two at a time. In the wild, “they live together in small bands of half a dozen and build platforms among the branches, out of boughs and leaves, on which they sleep.” But in Philadelphia, in the monkey house, where it was just the two of them, they had become “accustomed to sleep at night in each other’s arms on a blanket on the floor,” clutching each other, desperately, achingly, through the long, cold night.

The Philadelphia Zoological Garden was the first zoo in the United States. It opened in 1874, two years after Charles Darwin published “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,” in which he related what he had learned about the social attachments of primates from Abraham Bartlett, the superintendent of the Zoological Society of London:

Many kinds of monkeys, as I am assured by the keepers in the Zoological Gardens, delight in fondling and being fondled by each other, and by persons to whom they are attached. Mr. Bartlett has described to me the behavior of two chimpanzees, rather older animals than those generally imported into this country, when they were first brought together. They sat opposite, touching each other with their much protruded lips; and the one put his hand on the shoulder of the other. They then mutually folded each other in their arms. Afterwards they stood up, each with one arm on the shoulder of the other, lifted up their heads, opened their mouths, and yelled with delight.

Mr. and Miss Chimpanzee, in Philadelphia, were two of only four chimpanzees in America, and when she died human observers mourned her loss, but, above all, they remarked on the behavior of her companion. For a long time, they reported, he tried in vain to rouse her. Then he “went into a frenzy of grief.” This paroxysm accorded entirely with what Darwin had described in humans: “Persons suffering from excessive grief often seek relief by violent and almost frantic movements.” The bereaved chimpanzee began to pull out the hair from his head. He wailed, making a sound the zookeeper had never heard before: Hah-ah-ah-ah-ah . “His cries were heard over the entire garden. He dashed himself against the bars of the cage and butted his head upon the hard-wood bottom, and when this burst of grief was ended he poked his head under the straw in one corner and moaned as if his heart would break.”

Nothing quite like this had ever been recorded. Superintendent Brown prepared a scholarly article, “Grief in the Chimpanzee.” Even long after the death of the female, Brown reported, the male “invariably slept on a cross-beam at the top of the cage, returning to inherited habit, and showing, probably, that the apprehension of unseen dangers has been heightened by his sense of loneliness.”

Loneliness is grief, distended. People are primates, and even more sociable than chimpanzees. We hunger for intimacy. We wither without it. And yet, long before the present pandemic, with its forced isolation and social distancing, humans had begun building their own monkey houses. Before modern times, very few human beings lived alone. Slowly, beginning not much more than a century ago, that changed. In the United States, more than one in four people now lives alone; in some parts of the country, especially big cities, that percentage is much higher. You can live alone without being lonely, and you can be lonely without living alone, but the two are closely tied together, which makes lockdowns, sheltering in place, that much harder to bear. Loneliness, it seems unnecessary to say, is terrible for your health. In 2017 and 2018, the former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy declared an “epidemic of loneliness,” and the U.K. appointed a Minister of Loneliness. To diagnose this condition, doctors at U.C.L.A. devised a Loneliness Scale. Do you often, sometimes, rarely, or never feel these ways?

I am unhappy doing so many things alone. I have nobody to talk to. I cannot tolerate being so alone. I feel as if nobody really understands me. I am no longer close to anyone. There is no one I can turn to. I feel isolated from others.

In the age of quarantine, does one disease produce another?

“Loneliness” is a vogue term, and like all vogue terms it’s a cover for all sorts of things most people would rather not name and have no idea how to fix. Plenty of people like to be alone. I myself love to be alone. But solitude and seclusion, which are the things I love, are different from loneliness, which is a thing I hate. Loneliness is a state of profound distress. Neuroscientists identify loneliness as a state of hypervigilance whose origins lie among our primate ancestors and in our own hunter-gatherer past. Much of the research in this field was led by John Cacioppo, at the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, at the University of Chicago. Cacioppo, who died in 2018, was known as Dr. Loneliness. In the new book “ Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World ” (Harper Wave), Murthy explains how Cacioppo’s evolutionary theory of loneliness has been tested by anthropologists at the University of Oxford, who have traced its origins back fifty-two million years, to the very first primates. Primates need to belong to an intimate social group, a family or a band, in order to survive; this is especially true for humans (humans you don’t know might very well kill you, which is a problem not shared by most other primates). Separated from the group—either finding yourself alone or finding yourself among a group of people who do not know and understand you—triggers a fight-or-flight response. Cacioppo argued that your body understands being alone, or being with strangers, as an emergency. “Over millennia, this hypervigilance in response to isolation became embedded in our nervous system to produce the anxiety we associate with loneliness,” Murthy writes. We breathe fast, our heart races, our blood pressure rises, we don’t sleep. We act fearful, defensive, and self-involved, all of which drive away people who might actually want to help, and tend to stop lonely people from doing what would benefit them most: reaching out to others.

The loneliness epidemic, in this sense, is rather like the obesity epidemic. Evolutionarily speaking, panicking while being alone, like finding high-calorie foods irresistible, is highly adaptive, but, more recently, in a world where laws (mostly) prevent us from killing one another, we need to work with strangers every day, and the problem is more likely to be too much high-calorie food rather than too little. These drives backfire.

Loneliness, Murthy argues, lies behind a host of problems—anxiety, violence, trauma, crime, suicide, depression, political apathy, and even political polarization. Murthy writes with compassion, but his everything-can-be-reduced-to-loneliness argument is hard to swallow, not least because much of what he has to say about loneliness was said about homelessness in the nineteen-eighties, when “homelessness” was the vogue term—a word somehow easier to say than “poverty”—and saying it didn’t help. (Since then, the number of homeless Americans has increased.) Curiously, Murthy often conflates the two, explaining loneliness as feeling homeless. To belong is to feel at home. “To be at home is to be known,” he writes. Home can be anywhere. Human societies are so intricate that people have meaningful, intimate ties of all kinds, with all sorts of groups of other people, even across distances. You can feel at home with friends, or at work, or in a college dining hall, or at church, or in Yankee Stadium, or at your neighborhood bar. Loneliness is the feeling that no place is home. “In community after community,” Murthy writes, “I met lonely people who felt homeless even though they had a roof over their heads.” Maybe what people experiencing loneliness and people experiencing homelessness both need are homes with other humans who love them and need them, and to know they are needed by them in societies that care about them. That’s not a policy agenda. That’s an indictment of modern life.

In “ A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion ” (Oxford), the British historian Fay Bound Alberti defines loneliness as “a conscious, cognitive feeling of estrangement or social separation from meaningful others,” and she objects to the idea that it’s universal, transhistorical, and the source of all that ails us. She argues that the condition really didn’t exist before the nineteenth century, at least not in a chronic form. It’s not that people—widows and widowers, in particular, and the very poor, the sick, and the outcast—weren’t lonely; it’s that, since it wasn’t possible to survive without living among other people, and without being bonded to other people, by ties of affection and loyalty and obligation, loneliness was a passing experience. Monarchs probably were lonely, chronically. (Hey, it’s lonely at the top!) But, for most ordinary people, daily living involved such intricate webs of dependence and exchange—and shared shelter—that to be chronically or desperately lonely was to be dying. The word “loneliness” very seldom appears in English before about 1800. Robinson Crusoe was alone, but never lonely. One exception is “Hamlet”: Ophelia suffers from “loneliness”; then she drowns herself.

Modern loneliness, in Alberti’s view, is the child of capitalism and secularism. “Many of the divisions and hierarchies that have developed since the eighteenth century—between self and world, individual and community, public and private—have been naturalized through the politics and philosophy of individualism,” she writes. “Is it any coincidence that a language of loneliness emerged at the same time?” It is not a coincidence. The rise of privacy, itself a product of market capitalism—privacy being something that you buy—is a driver of loneliness. So is individualism, which you also have to pay for.

Alberti’s book is a cultural history (she offers an anodyne reading of “Wuthering Heights,” for instance, and another of the letters of Sylvia Plath ). But the social history is more interesting, and there the scholarship demonstrates that whatever epidemic of loneliness can be said to exist is very closely associated with living alone. Whether living alone makes people lonely or whether people live alone because they’re lonely might seem to be harder to say, but the preponderance of the evidence supports the former: it is the force of history, not the exertion of choice, that leads people to live alone. This is a problem for people trying to fight an epidemic of loneliness, because the force of history is relentless.

Before the twentieth century, according to the best longitudinal demographic studies, about five per cent of all households (or about one per cent of the world population) consisted of just one person. That figure began rising around 1910, driven by urbanization, the decline of live-in servants, a declining birth rate, and the replacement of the traditional, multigenerational family with the nuclear family. By the time David Riesman published “ The Lonely Crowd ,” in 1950, nine per cent of all households consisted of a single person. In 1959, psychiatry discovered loneliness, in a subtle essay by the German analyst Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. “Loneliness seems to be such a painful, frightening experience that people will do practically everything to avoid it,” she wrote. She, too, shrank in horror from its contemplation. “The longing for interpersonal intimacy stays with every human being from infancy through life,” she wrote, “and there is no human being who is not threatened by its loss.” People who are not lonely are so terrified of loneliness that they shun the lonely, afraid that the condition might be contagious. And people who are lonely are themselves so horrified by what they are experiencing that they become secretive and self-obsessed—“it produces the sad conviction that nobody else has experienced or ever will sense what they are experiencing or have experienced,” Fromm-Reichmann wrote. One tragedy of loneliness is that lonely people can’t see that lots of people feel the same way they do.

“During the past half century, our species has embarked on a remarkable social experiment,” the sociologist Eric Klinenberg wrote in “ Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone ,” from 2012. “For the first time in human history, great numbers of people—at all ages, in all places, of every political persuasion—have begun settling down as singletons.” Klinenberg considers this to be, in large part, a triumph; more plausibly, it is a disaster. Beginning in the nineteen-sixties, the percentage of single-person households grew at a much steeper rate, driven by a high divorce rate, a still-falling birth rate, and longer lifespans over all. (After the rise of the nuclear family, the old began to reside alone, with women typically outliving their husbands.) A medical literature on loneliness began to emerge in the nineteen-eighties, at the same time that policymakers became concerned with, and named, “homelessness,” which is a far more dire condition than being a single-person household: to be homeless is to be a household that does not hold a house. Cacioppo began his research in the nineteen-nineties, even as humans were building a network of computers, to connect us all. Klinenberg, who graduated from college in 1993, is particularly interested in people who chose to live alone right about then.

I suppose I was one of them. I tried living alone when I was twenty-five, because it seemed important to me, the way owning a piece of furniture that I did not find on the street seemed important to me, as a sign that I had come of age, could pay rent without subletting a sublet. I could afford to buy privacy, I might say now, but then I’m sure I would have said that I had become “my own person.” I lasted only two months. I didn’t like watching television alone, and also I didn’t have a television, and this, if not the golden age of television, was the golden age of “The Simpsons,” so I started watching television with the person who lived in the apartment next door. I moved in with him, and then I married him.

This experience might not fit so well into the story Klinenberg tells; he argues that networked technologies of communication, beginning with the telephone’s widespread adoption, in the nineteen-fifties, helped make living alone possible. Radio, television, Internet, social media: we can feel at home online. Or not. Robert Putnam’s influential book about the decline of American community ties, “Bowling Alone,” came out in 2000, four years before the launch of Facebook, which monetized loneliness. Some people say that the success of social media was a product of an epidemic of loneliness; some people say it was a contributor to it; some people say it’s the only remedy for it. Connect! Disconnect! The Economist declared loneliness to be “the leprosy of the 21st century.” The epidemic only grew.

This is not a peculiarly American phenomenon. Living alone, while common in the United States, is more common in many other parts of the world, including Scandinavia, Japan, Germany, France, the U.K., Australia, and Canada, and it’s on the rise in China, India, and Brazil. Living alone works best in nations with strong social supports. It works worst in places like the United States. It is best to have not only an Internet but a social safety net.

Then the great, global confinement began: enforced isolation, social distancing, shutdowns, lockdowns, a human but inhuman zoological garden. Zoom is better than nothing. But for how long? And what about the moment your connection crashes: the panic, the last tie severed? It is a terrible, frightful experiment, a test of the human capacity to bear loneliness. Do you pull out your hair? Do you dash yourself against the walls of your cage? Do you, locked inside, thrash and cry and moan? Sometimes, rarely, or never? More today than yesterday? ♦

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By Bill McKibben

By Rebecca Mead

By Camille Bordas

• What Makes a Family

What My Family Taught Me About Loneliness

G rowing up, I didn’t really dream of being a wife or mother. Not in the way I dreamed of playing Wimbledon or designing shoes for a living. But one vision of a future family flickered in my mind like an internal live photo:

Five kids sit behind me in a Suburban as we head West, my husband behind the wheel, all of us laughing and singing to En Vogue or Indigo Girls, Kirk Franklin or Janet Jackson. The order of the artists doesn’t matter; everyone gets a turn. This trip will take days, the sky blushing from rose to plum to highway-lit black several times before we’re done.

It’s taken me 30 years to realize that this idyllic image of a future family, made of subconscious odds and ends, was not actually just a figment of my imagination. The summer after I turned 10, my parents packed up our GMC van, bought a TripTik from AAA, and drove my sisters and me from Ohio to California to meet relatives we’d seen only in pictures.

Read More: The Love Story of My Chosen Family

Of course, the fantasy conveniently left out some unpleasant realities from our trip: five days of truck-stop showers in flip-flops and four nights spent sleeping in bucket seats at rest stops to save money. Yet it captured the essence of how I experienced those closest to me. Family, at its core, offered guaranteed belonging. Protection from loneliness. 

If you didn’t have friends–and I struggled to make and keep them beginning in junior high–family meant never spending a Friday night alone. And when the world incited more panic than peace in your bones, when your nervous system needed to be bubble-wrapped, family dropped everything. Left the factory floor in work boots and earplugs to pick you up, or answered your frantic calls from the school’s payphone, talking you down until everything—except the truth that you were wired differently—felt light and airy. The youngest and most anxious of three girls, I’d been born into a people who stretched their love and nervous systems over mine, covering me as I moved through a world that constantly overwhelmed me.

I have my own family now, and it looks a bit like the vision. Three kids and a Honda minivan, littered with remnants of kids’ meals, and a fine preacher-educator of a spouse. The five of us can barely make the 15-minute drive to Target, let alone California, without name-calling and “accidental” kicking or fights over who picks the next song.

Read More: We Didn't Have Much Money. My Daughter Still Deserved Joy

In this family, where we listen to “Jar of Hearts” and Hypnotize” alongside a mash-up of gospel hits, where we talk about feelings and go to therapy, I am deeply loved. Needed and known. But in the last year, I’ve sensed a difficult truth emerging that can’t be explained by turning 40 or finally being diagnosed with ADHD, after years of thinking it was just an anxiety disorder. There are times when I still feel lonely. Not in the weekend-plans way but in the overwhelming feeling that I wasn’t built for this role and what it requires. I had always thought of family as something that could protect you from loneliness, but what I’m realizing now, all these years after that road trip, is that loneliness also creeps in when you can’t meet your family’s needs—even when some of those needs mirror your own. 

Genetically, it makes sense that at least some of my children would have sensitive nervous systems. Why wouldn’t Loop earplugs and Tangle fidgets be part of our shared experiences? But knowing that and responding well are two different things. I have a wonderful spouse, who loves to executive-function and multitask, but even together, we have been stretched so very thin.

When one child requires an airtight schedule while another needs a spontaneous dopamine boost, or when one works best while humming and another can’t find their headphones fast enough, I do not stop, box breathe, and save the day. Nothing in my brain says: Hang in there, you can do this. Give yourself time. Instead, my own personal brand of black-and-white thinking and years of masking and shame declares: You can’t do this. You don’t even fit here, in the very family you helped create.

I know that isn’t true. I do fit here, even when it’s hard. The five of us are built into each another, a part of in ways I’ll never be able to measure or name.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that having an anxiety disorder and ADHD doesn’t give me some superpower connection to my kids. I’ll continue to learn how to best advocate for them and love them (and myself) well, but I’m not the best mom for them because I’m also neurodivergent. I’m the best mom for them because I’m their mom. And it’s OK that I’m still learning what that looks like.

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Last year, a school administrator who refused to accommodate my child’s needs offered a visual that, while hurtful in the moment, has become a thing of comfort to me. “I think we’re hanging on by gossamer threads,” she said to us, and we pulled our child from the school. In reality, we’d only been holding on by our registration.

I have long imagined being a strong and expansive, almost impermeable film of protection for my kids. My husband and I, stretching our nervous systems and love and prayers as far and wide as our family needed. But this year, we’ve spent many difficult days hanging on by gossamer threads.

So I have started feeling for those silky and delicate threads in the dark. Handwritten notes and old videos and photos of our lives together, evidence I can run my fingertips over, beauty that even my catastrophizing brain can’t deny:

Here we are on foam squares, I’m teaching you to read. Here’s the strawberry cake I baked from scratch when you liked Daniel Tiger. Here you are rapping Hamilton lyrics like a boss. Here, your dad has thrown you high in the air, and you will have whole seconds of freedom before you land safely in his arms.

Night after night, I remember. I witness more than protect. Here we are, thinned out and tired, with not enough answers, wishing the world were less of an affront to our way of being. Here we are, much more than a collection of needs. But when we feel like a collection of needs, let us be a family and remember. Gossamer strands are not what I had in mind, but they will hold.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Emotions & Feelings — Loneliness

Loneliness Essays

Brief description of loneliness.

Loneliness is a universal human experience characterized by a sense of isolation and disconnection from others. It can manifest in various forms, including social, emotional, and existential loneliness. Understanding the impact of loneliness is essential for addressing mental health and social well-being.

Importance of Writing Essays on This ... Read More Brief Description of Loneliness

Importance of writing essays on this topic.

Essays on loneliness are crucial for shedding light on the psychological, societal, and existential implications of this pervasive emotion. Exploring loneliness through writing allows individuals to gain insight into their own experiences and fosters empathy and understanding within academic and personal contexts.

Tips on Choosing a Good Topic

• Reflect on personal experiences with loneliness and how they have shaped your perspective
• Consider societal factors that contribute to feelings of isolation and disconnection
• Explore the intersection of loneliness with other themes such as mental health, technology, or literature

Essay Topics

• The Impact of Social Media on Feelings of Loneliness
• Exploring the Relationship Between Loneliness and Depression
• The Role of Community and Connection in Combating Loneliness
• Loneliness in the Age of Technology: A Reflection
• The Portrayal of Loneliness in Classic Literature
• How Loneliness Affects Mental Health in Adolescents
• The Stigma of Loneliness: Societal Perceptions and Realities
• Overcoming Loneliness Through Self-Compassion and Mindfulness
• The Connection Between Loneliness and Addiction
• The Link Between Loneliness and Physical Health

Concluding Thought

By delving into the complexities of loneliness through essay writing, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. Through critical exploration and reflection, essays on loneliness have the power to initiate important conversations and contribute to the collective understanding of this fundamental human experience.

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An Analysis of Loneliness in of Mice and Men, a Novel by John Steinbeck

A topic of loneliness in the novel "of mice and men" by john steinbeck, the theme of loneliness and alienation in j.d. salinger’s "catcher in the rye", analysis of characters' loneliness in of mice and men, loneliness and depression in "of mice and men" by john steinbeck, how social media can reduce actual loneliness, definition paper on loneliness, the loneliness of curley’s wife in of mice and men by john steinbeck, loneliness and friendship in the book 'of mice and men' by john steinbeck, internet for entertainment: impact of internet addiction, curleys wife loneliness analysis, isolation and loneliness in of mice and men, character analysis curleys wife, curleys wife passage analysis, relevant topics.

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Loneliness & Isolation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Essay

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Introduction

Alienation in shelley’s novel, responsibility in frankenstein, works cited.

The main character of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was sure regarding his uniqueness: “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me” (42). The reason is that Viktor Frankenstein was a young scientist obsessed with the idea of creating a unique living creature by referring to science and alchemy.

Still, he cannot love this monstrous human being, and this fact leads to disastrous consequences (Cengage Learning 7; Seal 84-86). This novel represents the key characteristics of Romanticism through accentuating isolation from society, the focus on exploring nature, and the freedom of desires and feelings (Chase 165-166; Varner 137-138). Viktor, a Romantic character, chooses alienation as his path in the world that leads him to misery, and he develops as an irresponsible scientist who does not realize his duty.

In Frankenstein, alienation is discussed through the perspective of sorrow and despair for the main characters. Although Viktor was brought up by loving parents, he always wanted to isolate himself from other people to focus on science (Gottlieb 127-129). Viktor states: “I must absent myself from all I loved while thus employed” (Shelley 117).

These words accentuate Viktor’s focus on himself and his desires that later determine his path, leading to more obsession with science and creating a new living being, as well as to more alienation while being locked in his laboratory and conducting experiments. Viktor’s alienation further leads him to despair because of creating the monster, but Frankenstein’s creature also suffers from isolation because he cannot be opened to society and accepted by it (Nesvet 348).

His first experience of interacting with people is described the following way: “The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me” (Shelley 83). The creature that wants to be loved faces the cruelty of the world that makes him become even more alienated and concentrated on revenge.

In addition to making him and his creature be isolated, Viktor does not accept the idea of duty and responsibility for his actions because of his inability to understand what it means to be responsible for the creation. Being focused on a scientific aspect of creating, Viktor ignores his duty as a creator and a “father” (Bloom 22; Halpern et al. 50; Nair 78). As a result, the creature is forced to ask: “How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind” (Shelley 78). In this context, Viktor understands his duty only after his creature’s words.

However, he still does not accept his responsibility as a “father” because he cannot love his “child.” Thus, the creature states, “Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us” (Shelley 78). From this perspective, it is possible to note that Viktor is unable to take responsibility for his actions and perform his duties as both a scientist and a creator despite his ambition.

Alienation and the lack of responsibility regarding the scientist’s actions for society can be viewed as partially related to the modern world. On the one hand, the isolation of a scientist today cannot lead him to impressive results, but this characteristic is typical of Romanticism. On the other hand, modern scientists change the world, and they need to be responsible for their actions. Therefore, the ideas stated by Shelley in the novel should be reconsidered from the perspective of the modern world.

Bloom, Harold. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Infobase Learning, 2013.

Cengage Learning. A Study Guide for Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s “Frankenstein”. Gale/Cengage Learning, 2015.

Chase, Cynthia. Romanticism. Routledge, 2014.

Gottlieb, Evan, editor. Global Romanticism: Origins, Orientations, and Engagements, 1760–1820. Bucknell University Press, 2014.

Halpern, Megan K., et al. “Stitching Together Creativity and Responsibility: Interpreting Frankenstein across Disciplines.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, vol. 36, no. 1, 2016, pp. 49-57.

Nair, Lekshmi R. “Playing God: Robin Cook’s ‘Mutation’ as a Reworking of the Frankenstein Theme of the Creator Pitted against the Creation.” Writers Editors Critics, vol. 6, no. 2, 2016, pp. 77-82.

Nesvet, Rebecca. “Review: Frankenstein: Text and Mythos.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2018, pp. 347-351.

Seal, Jon. GCSE English Literature for AQA Frankenstein Student Book. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Diversion Books, 2015.

Varner, Paul. Historical Dictionary of Romanticism in Literature. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

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IvyPanda. (2020, March 11). Loneliness & Isolation in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. https://ivypanda.com/essays/loneliness-isolation-in-mary-shelleys-frankenstein/

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1. IvyPanda . "Loneliness & Isolation in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." March 11, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/loneliness-isolation-in-mary-shelleys-frankenstein/.

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Social Isolation

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Though our need to connect is innate, many of us frequently feel alone. Loneliness is the state of distress or discomfort that results when one perceives a gap between one’s desires for social connection and actual experiences of it. Even some people who are surrounded by others throughout the day—or are in a long-lasting marriage —still experience a deep and pervasive loneliness. Research suggests that loneliness poses serious threats to well-being as well as long-term physical health.

• Identifying and Fighting Loneliness
• Loneliness, Health, and Well-Being

Whether a person lives in isolation or not, feeling a lack of social connectedness can be painful. Loneliness can be described in different ways; a commonly used measure of loneliness, the UCLA Loneliness Scale, asks individuals about a range of feelings or deficits of connection, including how often they:

feel they lack companionship

feel left out

feel “in tune” with people around them

feel outgoing and friendly

feel there are people they can turn to

Given the potential health consequences for those who feel like they have few or no supportive social connections, widespread loneliness poses a major societal challenge. But it underscores a demand for increased outreach and connection on a personal level, too.

Loneliness is as tied to the quality of one's relationships as it is to the number of connections one has. And it doesn’t only stem from heartache or isolation.  A  lack of authenticity in relationships  can result in feelings of loneliness. For some, not having a coveted animal companion, or the absence of a quiet presence in the home (even if one has plenty of social contacts in the wider world), can trigger loneliness. 

There's evidence that lonely individuals have a sort of negativity bias in evaluating social interactions. Lonely people pick up on  signs of potential rejection more quickly than do others, perhaps better to avoid it and protect themselves. People who feel lonely need to be aware of this bias so as to override it in seeking out companionship.

Solitude, or time spent alone, is not inherently negative and can even be restorative or advantageous in other ways. Research suggests the reasons young people choose to be alone matter—they may do so to relax, create, or reflect, rather than to avoid other people.

Loneliness researcher John Cacioppo argues that just as you can start an exercise regimen to gain strength and improve your health, you can combat loneliness through small moves that build emotional strength and resilience . He has devised techniques for people at particularly high risk for chronic loneliness, such as soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They may be useful to anyone. 

A number of unfavorable outcomes have been linked to loneliness. In addition to its association with depressive symptoms and other forms of mental illness, loneliness is a risk factor for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and arthritis, among other diseases. Lonely people are also twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, research suggests. The state of chronic loneliness may trigger adverse physiological responses such as the increased production of stress hormones , hinder sleep, and result in weakened immunity.

While a person can’t die simply from feeling too lonely, findings that lonely people have higher rates of mortality and certain diseases supports the idea that, over time, chronic loneliness can play a role in increasing the risk of dying.

Feelings of loneliness and isolation affect people of all ages, although adolescents and the elderly  may be especially likely to be impacted.

About 40 percent of Americans reported regularly feeling lonely in 2010, and other reports affirm that it is common for people to feel lonely at least some of the time. The high rates of reported loneliness have led some to declare an “epidemic,” though it is not clear that loneliness is increasing in younger generations.

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Essay On Loneliness

Introduction: Loneliness is a complex and usually unpleasant emotional response to isolation. It refers to a state of being alone. It is a moment when one feels sad because of being cut off from one’s near and dear ones either physically or psychologically. The extreme case of physical loneliness would be solitary confinement in a prison or being marooned on an island like Robinson Crusoe, Alexander Selkirk, etc. It has also been described as social pain a psychological mechanism meant to motivate an individual to seek social connections.

Loneliness is to be clearly distinguished from solitude as unlike the latter, it is always an unwelcomed feeling to which one is subject out of some external or inner compulsions. It is beyond one’s control whereas many persons would occasionally prefer enjoying solitude, far from the madding crowds.

Loneliness is often defined in terms of one’s connectedness to others, or more specifically as “the unpleasant experience that occurs when a person’s network of social relations is deficient in some important way”.

Grounds of Loneliness: Man faces an increasing incidence of loneliness because of the fast-changing social and economic conditions of modern times. It is a comparatively recent phenomenon: Close quite primitive groups bring out a precarious existence by hunting wild animals or eating wild fruits would not experience loneliness as they would always engage collectively in life-supporting activities.

Later settled agricultural communities were land-based and had a little occasion for feeling loneliness for the individuals who had strong ties with their families and village communities. They were alone neither in their joys nor in their sorrows as both the conditions brought them together for intensifying the joys and reducing the sorrow by sharing.

Loneliness can also be seen as a social phenomenon, capable of spreading like a disease. When one person in a group begins to feel lonely, this feeling can spread to others, increasing everybody’s risk for feelings of loneliness. People can feel lonely even when they are surrounded by other people.

Individual’s levels of loneliness typically remain more or less constant during adulthood until 75 to 80 years of age, when they increase somewhat. Prolonged loneliness is associated with depression, poor social support, neuroticism, and introversion. Studies have shown that loneliness puts people at risk for physical disease and that it may contribute to a shortened life span.

The Risks of Loneliness: Loneliness typically includes anxious feelings about a lack of connection or communication with other beings, both in the present and extending into the future. It can be a risk factor for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, arthritis, among other critical diseases. Lonely people are also twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

At the root, isolation compromises immunity increases the production of stress hormones and is harmful to sleep. All of this feeds chronic inflammation, which lowers immunity to the degree that lonely people even suffer more from the common cold. Loneliness can be a chronic stress condition that ages the body and causes damage to overall well-being.

Psychological Aspect: Loneliness may often grow out of some psychological compulsions. A person may suffer from an inferiority complex that he is unwanted or unloved. He/she will naturally avoid routine contact with others for fear of being repulsed or rebuffed. He/she will feel secure only when he is alone. He/she who cannot enjoy a company cannot enjoy real happiness which consists mostly of interaction with others or in getting appreciation or approval from others.

Conclusion: Loneliness is both pleasing and boring. It is correlated with social anxiety, social inhibition (shyness), sadness, hostility, distrust, and low self-esteem, characteristics that hamper one’s ability to interact in skillful and rewarding ways. Circumstantial loneliness causes no pains but forcide loneliness is bordom. But the person who has seen death from close quarters finds the true and real meaning of life. Similarly a person, who has undergone the experience of loneliness for a substantional time, keenly feels the joy of social interaction such a person realizes the true dimension of security and relaxation, one experiences in the company of one’s family members or dear friends. Experiences of loneliness strengthen social ties and convert even loners into social beings.

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Homelessness, Social Exclusion, Loneliness: increasing social and health issues.

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Homelessness is a complex and evolving phenomenon characterized by severe housing deprivation and profound social marginalization. It encompasses not only "material poverty"—the lack of a home, job, income, and other basic necessities—but also "relational poverty," referring to the absence of family relationships, friendships, and social connections. This lack of social ties leads to progressive social impoverishment and exclusion from essential healthcare systems and human rights. The consequences of homelessness are far-reaching, affecting both individuals and society. Individuals experience educational deficits, reduced life expectancy, and an increased risk of illness and injury. Society, in turn, bears significant social costs, including heightened healthcare expenses, reduced public safety resulting in increased criminal justice expenditures, and lost productivity. Despite its complexity, homelessness has attracted attention from diverse disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, pedagogy, psychology, medicine, economics, law, and architecture. National and international welfare policies have been implemented to combat poverty and promote social inclusion. However, given the global rise in homelessness, the full extent of its impact—both socially and from a healthcare perspective—remains underexplored and inadequately analyzed. In line with the framework of the UN General Assembly's 2023 report, “Inclusive policies and programmes to address homelessness,” this research topic aims to adopt a worldwide approach by recognizing and addressing the global contrasts and the convergence of issues and strategies related to homelessness. The report highlights that while knowledge and policies on homelessness are improving, substantial efforts are still needed. Homelessness is both a concrete violation of human rights and an indicator of extreme poverty and social exclusion. It exists on all continents, albeit with varying manifestations, and is frequently interconnected with a range of other social issues, including poverty, rising inequalities, lack of access to adequate housing, displacement, and gender-based violence. Preventing and addressing homelessness requires an intersectional approach that considers its multidimensional nature and necessitates holistic policies covering housing, healthcare and services, and social and legal protection. Recognizing these complexities, we aim to advance our understanding and contribute to more effective and compassionate solutions by encouraging inclusive and comprehensive perspectives. Contributions to this research topic can explore subtopics such as: • Health and Social Living Conditions: • Quantitative and qualitative research on the health and/or social living conditions of homeless individuals. • Studies on visible and invisible dynamics, various forms of exclusion, and related stigma. • Mechanisms and strategies for social inclusion. • Intersectional Approaches: • Research that examines how homelessness intersects with issues such as gender-based violence, substance misuse, and mental health. • Studies on the impact of economic factors, such as lack of decent employment, high energy and healthcare costs, and unbridled property speculation. • Holistic Policies and Interventions: • Essays on experimental projects designed and/or implemented to address multiple dimensions of the homelessness phenomenon. • Policy analyses focusing on housing, healthcare, social services, and legal protections. • Case Studies: • In-depth analyses of specific aspects of homelessness. • Evaluations of intervention strategies and their effectiveness. Types of Submissions We Welcome: • Original research articles utilizing quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. • Reviews and syntheses of existing literature on homelessness. • Methodological papers that propose new ways to study homelessness. • Policy analyses and recommendations. • Case reports and detailed case studies. • Essays and theoretical papers exploring new conceptual frameworks. By fostering a multi-disciplinary dialogue and encouraging diverse methodological approaches, this research topic aims to understand the full scope of homelessness and contribute to the development of effective strategies for inclusion and management.

Keywords : Homelessness, Loneliness, Social Exclusion, Social Education, Health and Social Costs

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Essay on Loneliness- Suitable for all students

• Abdul Aouwal
• May 21, 2024

Loneliness refers to a state of being alone. It is a moment when one feels sad because of being cut off from one's near and dear ones either physically or psychologically. The extreme case of physical loneliness would be solitary confinement in a prison or being marooned on an island like Robinson Crusoe, Alexander Selkirk, etc.

Loneliness is to be clearly distinguished from solitude as unlike the latter, it is always an unwelcomed feeling to which one is subject out of some external or inner compulsions. It is beyond one's control whereas many persons would occasionally prefer enjoying solitude, far from the madding crowd s.

Grounds of loneliness: Man faces increasing incidence of loneliness because of the fast changing social and economic conditions of modern times. It is a comparatively recent phenomenon: Close quite primitive groups bring out a precarious existence by hunting wild animals or eating wild fruits would not experience loneliness as they would always engage collectively in life-supporting activities.

Later settled agricultural communities were land-based and had a little occasion for feeling loneliness for the individuals had strong ties with their families and village communities. They were alone neither in their joys nor in their sorrows as both the conditions brought them together for intensifying the joys and reducing the sorrow by sharing.

In industrial society : It is only in industrial societies that loneliness has emerged as a growing phenomenon. A job- seeker has to leave his village and occasionally family to seek his livelihood in some factories in a town or in some construction activities away from his home.

He is cut off from his familiar environment and has to start his life in a new place. He may not find any friend or relation with whom he can talk or share his problems. Even the employed have to migrate to other cities in search of better job opportunities and have to undergo the periods of loneliness before they build up a circle of friendship in the new places.

Introverted people: Circumstances apart, there are certain individuals who, because of their introverted nature, cannot come out of their shells and interact with their colleagues, neighbors or classmates. They do not take initiatives to make evidence towards them.

They build up a reputation for being cold and indifferent to others. So in much so that others stop approaching. them. Even in the time of need, such introverted people cannot request others to help them and thus remain all alone.

Pre-occupation of opinions: Some people are so much preoccupied with their high opinions of themselves that they consider it beneath their dignity to make even formal aquaintance with their neighbors. They remain absorbed in their own business, cognition, and thoughts even when they are not actually engaged in some works. But they forget that they are also social beings and need others approval for maintaining self-esteem or positive image of. themselves.

Organizational hierachy: In modern society, most people work in organizations and occupy a certain position in the non-organizational, hierachy. Those at the top position of their organization tend to consider themselves top even among their relations and neighbors.

They cannot shake off their rank even in non-organizational environment. They are condescending and patronising others naturally in resenting this behaviour as they may also be occupying significant or important positions in their organisations.

Top-ranking person: Since at the very top, there is only one position in the organization, the top man feels quite lonely, unless he makes an effort to win over others, he is likely to be isolated, his organizational subordinates may hesitate in mixing with him for fear of annoying him particularly if he is a man of fixed notions.

Psychological aspect: Loneliness may often grow out of some psychological compulsions. A person may suffer from an inferiority complex that he is unwanted or unloved. He will naturally avoid routine contact with others for fear of being repulsed or rebuffed. He will feel secure only when he is alone. He who cannot enjoy a company, cannot enjoy real happiness which consists mostly of interaction with others or in getting appreciation or approval from others.

Conclusion: Loneliness is both pleasing and boring. Circumstantial loneliness causes no pains but forcide lonelines is bordom. But the person who has seen death from close quarters finds the true and real meaning of life.

Similarly, a person who has undergone the experience of loneliness for a substantial time, keenly feels the joy of social interaction such a person realizes the true dimension of security and relaxation, one experiences in the company of one's family members or dear friends. Experiences of loneliness strengthen social ties and convert even loners into social beings.

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Surgeon General: Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms

By Vivek H. Murthy

Dr. Murthy is the surgeon general.

One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don’t have the luxury to wait for perfect information. You assess the available facts, you use your best judgment, and you act quickly.

The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor. Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours . Additionally, nearly half of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies.

It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe. Evidence from tobacco studies show that warning labels can increase awareness and change behavior. When asked if a warning from the surgeon general would prompt them to limit or monitor their children’s social media use, 76 percent of people in one recent survey of Latino parents said yes.

To be clear, a warning label would not, on its own, make social media safe for young people. The advisory I issued a year ago about social media and young people’s mental health included specific recommendations for policymakers, platforms and the public to make social media safer for kids. Such measures, which already have strong bipartisan support, remain the priority.

Legislation from Congress should shield young people from online harassment, abuse and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content that too often appears in algorithm-driven feeds. The measures should prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and should restrict the use of features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use.

Additionally, companies must be required to share all of their data on health effects with independent scientists and the public — currently they do not — and allow independent safety audits. While the platforms claim they are making their products safer, Americans need more than words. We need proof.

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