Who Are The Loneliest?

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If you look at current news articles about loneliness, you would find a lot of them are concerned about loneliness among the elderly (see for example this article or this one). It is certainly a great cause of concern given the rather detrimental health effects that chronic loneliness can have, including an increased risk of mortality (e.g. loneliness can increase early death by 26%). However, has the increased focus on loneliness among the elderly taken away focus from other groups of individuals that may also be experiencing high levels of loneliness as well?

Recent research published by Maike Luhmann and Louise Hawkley explore how loneliness is distributed across the lifecycle from late adolescence to old age. They got their data from a large, nationally representative sample of Germans (N = 16,132). Here are some of their findings:

The oldest old and young adults were the loneliest

As one would expect, the oldest old (defined as being over 80) were the loneliest.

Source: Tomwsulcer/Wikipedia

However, coming in second place were young adults around the age of 30. There was also another spike in loneliness around age 60. There were two dips in loneliness around the ages of 40 and 75 years old. This nonlinear progression of loneliness across different ages suggests that at different points in the lifespan, a person may become more susceptible to loneliness. Among the oldest old, what contributed significantly to feelings of loneliness were the absence of a significant attachment figure and the presence of functional limitations. When the researchers controlled for those covariates, the levels of loneliness dropped drastically for the oldest old, but not for other age groups. It was unclear from this study why other age groups (at ages 30 and 60) experienced these spikes in loneliness.

This leaves open the question, why are young adults experiencing these increased levels of loneliness? In addition, what can we do to help these individuals feel less lonely?

The higher your income, the less lonely you are

Researchers found that income was negatively associated with the strength of loneliness. Thus, the higher the income, the less one has feelings of loneliness. This was true, even when they controlled for covariates such as work status, relationship status, living arrangements, etc. Income had a unique association with loneliness beyond other factors such as the type of job they had, whether they were single or with a partner, how many people were in their household, etc. This relationship between income and loneliness though, varied across different ages. The relationship was the strongest for middle-aged participants as compared to participants who were younger and older. The researchers argued perhaps it was because money played a greater role in middle-aged adults, or because it is easier for younger and older adults to socialize in ways that were not dependent on money.

The more friends you had, the more contact you had with others, and being in a relationship were related to being less lonely

The last set of findings was not as surprising. Having fewer friends, having less contact with others and being single were all related to being lonelier. These relationships held true even when the researchers controlled for other factors and looked at the distribution across different ages. One interesting variation though was that more face-to-face contact was related to less loneliness but more online contact was related to greater loneliness.

I often describe loneliness as the same emotion with many different causes. The age of a person clearly plays a role in how a person experiences their loneliness. While we have some understanding of the elderly’s experience of loneliness and way of intervening, things become less clear with young adults who experience relatively high levels of loneliness as well. And while obvious factors such as having more friends and being in a relationship make you less lonely, it is less clear why having a higher income would also make you less lonely as well.

Reference: Luhmann, R. & Hawkley, L.C. (2016). Age differences in loneliness from late adolescence to oldest old age. Developmental Psychology, 52(6), 943-959.

Find out more on loneliness here.

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