“It’s easy to find claims that loneliness is rising (for example, here’s a recent Wall Street Journal article on that theme). But last summer the Social Capital Project run by the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress published “All the Lonely Americans?” (August 22, 2018) and found little evidence of such an increase. The report cites a broad array of claims and evidence, which you can check out for yourself. But here’s a quick overview of some main points (with citations omitted for readability):
There are a few different but related questions that tend to get lumped into one general story about whether loneliness is on the rise in America, in part because of a lack of good data, and occasionally because of a failure to distinguish the two often distinct lines of psychological and sociological research. One question is whether Americans are increasingly alone (that is, have fewer social contacts, or have less social interaction). This question, which sociologists tend to study, is about objectively observable social networks or relationship characteristics. It is distinguishable from the second question, regarding the subjective experience of loneliness. This latter question—whether Americans are increasingly experiencing loneliness (`perceived social isolation’)—has typically been the research purview of psychologists.
Correlations are lower than we might expect between the most common measures of loneliness and objective measures of social network characteristics, so these two questions are substantially though not wholly distinct from each other. … However, it is not at all clear that loneliness has increased over the last several decades.
In his 2011 book, Still Connected: Family and Friends in America Since 1970, sociologist Claude Fischer puts a fine point on this question: `For all the interest in loneliness, there appears to be little national survey data that would permit us to draw trends.′
We looked for the strongest support for the claim that loneliness has risen, and the best we could find comes from polls by FGI. Between 1994 and 2004, the FGI polls indicate that the share of adults saying loneliness was a problem for them rose from roughly 25 percent to 30 percent. It is unclear, however, whether this five-point difference reflects a real shift or arises from chance differences in the people sampled in each year or in survey administration.
The remaining evidence suggests flat trends. … The claim that loneliness has doubled—or even increased—since the 1980s (let alone the late 1960s) is simply unwarranted. … It is entirely possible that loneliness has increased over time, but the available evidence does not appear to support that claim. It is just as possible that loneliness has stayed the same or even declined.”
It looks like this report is from 2018, and doesn’t incorporate the 2019 YouGov research I linked. (I doubt pre-2004 data will give us insight into modern loneliness. Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist back then, for instance.) This bit is interesting though:
More recently, some media outlets have misinterpreted the results of a 2018 Cigna survey to argue that loneliness has increased. The survey indicated that loneliness was higher for younger Americans than for older ones. A mistaken interpretation of this finding would be that older Americans were less likely to be lonely when they were younger than today’s younger Americans are. This interprets life-course changes in loneliness as reflecting a change over time for Americans whatever their stage in the life course. While USA Today reported the age-based results as “surprising,” the research on the relationship between age and loneliness suggests that the “[p]revalence and intensity of lonely feelings are greater in adolescence and young adulthood (i.e., 16-25 years of age),” decline with age, and then increase again in the very old.33 The Cigna survey does not support the claim that loneliness has increased over time, nor is the increased loneliness of adolescents a new revelation.
It’s not clear to me how to reconcile this with e.g. the research YouGov cites to attribute loneliness among current youth to social media use. I guess a natural first step would be to see whether the magnitude of historical effects in the Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behavior can explain what YouGov saw. I think you’d have to analyze data carefully to figure out if it supports the hypothesis “young people just tend to be lonelier” or the hypothesis “social ties get weaker with every passing generation + elderly people get lonely as their friends die”.
In any case, I think loneliness could be a problem worth tackling even if it isn’t rising. (And you will notice I didn’t technically claim it was rising :P) The point is also somewhat moot as only one person expressed interest as a result of me posting here.
Fair enough I haven’t looked at the YouGov report.
I responding to the thrust of Tyler’s quote at the top.
I doubt pre-2004 data will give us insight into modern loneliness. Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist back then, for instance.
That data is especially precious because you need a ‘before’ measurement to see whether social media coincides with any change or loneliness staying the same as before!
But I agree many problems aren’t increasing but are still well worth addressing!
Loneliness may indeed be rising, but we don’t yet have good evidence that that’s the case:
“It’s easy to find claims that loneliness is rising (for example, here’s a recent Wall Street Journal article on that theme). But last summer the Social Capital Project run by the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress published “All the Lonely Americans?” (August 22, 2018) and found little evidence of such an increase. The report cites a broad array of claims and evidence, which you can check out for yourself. But here’s a quick overview of some main points (with citations omitted for readability):
It looks like this report is from 2018, and doesn’t incorporate the 2019 YouGov research I linked. (I doubt pre-2004 data will give us insight into modern loneliness. Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist back then, for instance.) This bit is interesting though:
It’s not clear to me how to reconcile this with e.g. the research YouGov cites to attribute loneliness among current youth to social media use. I guess a natural first step would be to see whether the magnitude of historical effects in the Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behavior can explain what YouGov saw. I think you’d have to analyze data carefully to figure out if it supports the hypothesis “young people just tend to be lonelier” or the hypothesis “social ties get weaker with every passing generation + elderly people get lonely as their friends die”.
In any case, I think loneliness could be a problem worth tackling even if it isn’t rising. (And you will notice I didn’t technically claim it was rising :P) The point is also somewhat moot as only one person expressed interest as a result of me posting here.
Fair enough I haven’t looked at the YouGov report.
I responding to the thrust of Tyler’s quote at the top.
That data is especially precious because you need a ‘before’ measurement to see whether social media coincides with any change or loneliness staying the same as before!
But I agree many problems aren’t increasing but are still well worth addressing!