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Loneliness is a serious public-health problem:
Doctors and policymakers in the rich world are increasingly worried about loneliness. Campaigns to reduce it have been launched in Britain, Denmark and Australia. In Japan the government has surveyed hikikomori, or "people who shut themselves in their homes". Last year Vivek Murthy, a former surgeon-general of the United States, called loneliness an epidemic, likening its impact on health to obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes per day. In January Theresa May, the British prime minister, appointed a minister for loneliness.
That the problem exists is obvious; its nature and extent are not. Obesity can be measured on scales. But how to weigh an emotion? Researchers start by distinguishing several related conditions. Loneliness is not synonymous with social isolation (how often a person meets or speaks to friends and family) or with solitude (which implies a choice to be alone).
Instead researchers define loneliness as perceived social isolation, a feeling of not having the social contacts one would like. Of course, the objectively isolated are much more likely than the average person to feel lonely. But loneliness can also strike those with seemingly ample friends and family. Nor is loneliness always a bad thing. John Cacioppo, an American psychologist who died in March, called it a reflex honed by natural selection. Early humans would have been at a disadvantage if isolated from a group, he noted, so it makes sense for loneliness to stir a desire for company. Transient loneliness still serves that purpose today. The problem comes when it is prolonged.
[...] A study published in 2010 using this scale estimated that 35% of Americans over 45 were lonely. Of these 45% had felt this way for at least six years; a further 32% for one to five years. In 2013 Britain's Office for National Statistics (ONS), by dint of asking a simple question, classed 25% of people aged 52 or over as "sometimes lonely" with an extra 9% "often lonely".
Other evidence points to the extent of isolation. For 41% of Britons over 65, TV or a pet is their main source of company, according to Age UK, a charity. In Japan more than half a million people stay at home for at least six months at a time, making no contact with the outside world, according to a report by the government in 2016. Another government study reckons that 15% of Japanese regularly eat alone. A popular TV show is called "The Solitary Gourmet".
[...] The idea that loneliness is bad for your health is not new. One early job of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Yukon region was to keep tabs on the well-being of gold prospectors who might go months without human contact. Evidence points to the benign power of a social life. Suicides fall during football World Cups, for example, maybe because of the transient feeling of community.
But only recently has medicine studied the links between relationships and health. In 2015 a meta-analysis led by Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University, in Utah, synthesised 70 papers, through which 3.4m participants were followed over an average of seven years. She found that those classed as lonely had a 26% higher risk of dying, and those living alone a 32% higher chance, after accounting for differences in age and health status.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday September 10 2018, @06:22PM (2 children)
I would tend to agree.
But loneliness may not be a primary cause. It may be a result. A symptom of something needing a different treatment.
If someone is lonely and depressed, which is the cause? Are you sure it is that way in all cases?
I think you are too focused on snowflakes who want to blame someone else for their problems. That is not the only problem. And its solution (which you propose) is not the solution for other problems.
Also, I wish there were a better term than snowflake for overly sensitive and entitled people. Snowflake is a loaded term partly because it has entered politics to describe someone that one disagrees with.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Monday September 10 2018, @07:34PM (1 child)
Then make one up. I propose "SEP" (Sensitive, Entitled, People), plural "SEPs" and their influence "SEPsis" :)
A bit less tounge-in-cheek would be "self-entitiled"
(Score: 4, Funny) by acid andy on Monday September 10 2018, @08:41PM
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?