How Social Isolation Is Killing Us (nymag.com)

schwit1 quotes a report from The New York Times: Social isolation is a growing epidemic (Warning: may be paywalled; alternate source) -- one that's increasingly recognized as having dire physical, mental and emotional consequences. Since the 1980s, the percentage of American adults who say they're lonely has doubled from 20 percent to 40 percent. About one-third of Americans older than 65 now live alone, and half of those over 85 do. People in poorer health -- especially those with mood disorders like anxiety and depression -- are more likely to feel lonely. Those without a college education are the least likely to have someone they can talk to about important personal matters. A wave of new research suggests social separation is bad for us. Individuals with less social connection have disrupted sleep patterns, altered immune systems, more inflammation and higher levels of stress hormones. One recent study found that isolation increases the risk of heart disease by 29 percent and stroke by 32 percent. Another analysis that pooled data from 70 studies and 3.4 million people found that socially isolated individuals had a 30 percent higher risk of dying in the next seven years, and that this effect was largest in middle age. Loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early: Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.

Comments

Not everyone is the same

[burtosis]

There are actually some people who are either happy or at least nonplussed to be alone. Not everyone feels a deep seated need to talk about the weather or hear about trivial personal problems. Not everyone who lives alone degenerates into a curled up ball and mentally wastes away. But the day health risks are determined on an individual basis from a large pool of facts is far, far away. People like the security blanket statements that sum up a complicated condition into one handy catch phrase or statistic. Much like stereotypes, while statistically this study may be correct in general it certainly does not apply to everyone equally.

Re:Not everyone is the same

[Falconhell]

If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.

Re:Not everyone is the same

[ColdWetDog]

Extrovert vs. Introvert. This article does not account for differences in personality. It may only indicate that lonely extroverts die from lack of stimulation.

No, the article attempts to pull lots of separate studies together in one over arching thesis. While the result may well be valid for a population of humans, there are undoubtably subsets of people where the assumptions don't hold true. TFA doesn't really speak to this.

So if you're happy sitting here by yourself typing away, go for it.

But ask yourself, are you really happy?

(If not, please send $49.99 in three easy payments to the address at the bottom of your screen - we're here to help.)

Re:Not everyone is the same

[hey!]

There are actually some people who are either happy or at least nonplussed to be alone.

I think this is true. The trick is really knowing if this is really you.

Let me give an analogy. A few years ago I was driving home from Christmas dinner at my sister's house when suddenly I couldn't unclench my hands from the steering wheel. I went to the emergency room, they did a blood test and my blood sugar was over 600. "You're diabetic," the doctor said, and she gave me a shot of insulin. Suddenly, I felt better than I had in twenty years. The things is, I had been feeling like crap for years, but I didn't know it. I thought I felt normal, but that's because "normal" is how you feel every day.

After that experience I've come to doubt self-reports of well-being. I look at people who sincerely believe they are happy, but they don't look like happy to me. They seem miserable. Resentful. Sour-tempered. On a good day they might manage smug. Now maybe the problem is I don't have access to their rich inner lives, which they must keep bottled up like they're in a thermos. But it's just possible that they're deceived by the extraordinary human capacity to get used to feeling like crap.

You don't have to believe the notion that social connection leads to greater levels of human health and happiness -- although it seems at least plausible given that this is true for practically every other primate species. And even in you believe it is true for most people, that doesn't necessarily mean that applies to you. Maybe you're a special case.

But it seems to me rational to approach life as an experiment. You might think you are as happy as happy can be, but why take it for granted this is your best version of "normal"? And of course experiments force you to sharpen a lot of fuzzy concepts, like "social connection" or "isolation". I am an introvert. It doesn't mean I'm shy, or socially awkward, or misanthropic. It doesn't mean I don't need social connections. It just means I need different things from those connections than an extrovert would.

Money

[rsilvergun]

what's isolating me is money. Every year my income is more or less static but my bills go up. I've had promotions, a few projects that brought in some extra cash; but they've mostly served to keep my head above water and clean up the mess from the 2008 economy crash.

Plus it's hard to stay in one place for any length of time. You gotta move to where the work is. And to be blunt, I live in the cheap tech worker apartments, and that means lots and lots of folks here on work visas. They're nice people, but they're not my people.

I'd be a hell of a lot less isolated if the economy would stabilize, but I don't see a snowball's chance in hell of that...

Re:Money

[sydbarrett74]

roman_mir is Ayn Rand's Poltergeist, destined to plague /. for ever. Where's Steven Freeling when we need him?

Re:Money

[khallow]

Inflation is good for the economy because it reduces the relative percentage of the GDP that must be devoted to debt service.

Not everyone borrows as much as they can. Ignoring significant parts of the economy while making blanket claims about the economy is not good for the economy.

What people like yourself don't understand is that the vast majority of money that exists in bank deposit accounts was not created by the government. It was created by banks, with debts credited as assets on the bank's balance sheet. All of that money that was created all came with a future interest obligation.

Quite simply, if you do not inflation not only do people get poorer, but everyone defaults on their debts.

Unless they don't owe enough debt for that to be relevant.

The government always controls the money supply. It does this by adjudicating debts only in the currency that it has the sole legal right to create and regulate. It does this by levying taxes. And, in a more complex system impossible for libertardians to understand, sovereign governments coordinate with one another to adjust exchange rates for mutually beneficial ends.

I see use of the term, "libertardians" here. Real classy that.

The huge problem with your entire post is that it treats debt as if there was only one side, the borrower. There however is also the lender. And everything about inflation that is good for the borrower is equally bad for the lender. That's because lending is a trade and inflation is directly adjusting the relative costs and benefits of the trade in a zero sum game.

That leads to two flaws in your argument. First, we still have lending despite this bias in favor of borrowers. What happens is lenders increase their interest rates (the costs of the loan) and the supposed advantages of inflation for the borrower go away.

Second, why should we favor the borrower over the lender? I'll note here that borrowers tend to be a lot less competent and disciplined than lenders. Encouraging them to borrow more doesn't seem a sane thing to do and there have been problems with excessive debt in every recession the US (to give a country I know a lot about) has had.

What's really going on here is that country-level governments tend to both have control of their money supply and borrow a lot. So inflation, particularly an increasing rate of inflation helps cut the cost of the debt they imprudently acquired as well as the liabilities they have promised. And due to the immense propaganda mechanisms at their control, they get to spin that as inflation being a good thing without significant opposition.

Cultural sickness.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much to be sociable you need a large group of people.

In the past this was based either around your extended family, region, race, religion, or national heritage. This was not always a good thing either at the micro or macro level, but it did represent a support network for some (but not all) members of a societal group.

Nowadays much of this has been lost, due to globalization, electronics, hetereogenized neighborhoods (especially new builds as evidenced in the US.) Neighborhoods for better or worse are often no longer established families and friends. As people have spread out, that previous sense of community has slowly dissolved. While there just as many people available today, fewer of them are willing to interact with people outside of their social norms, and since those social norms are spread more thinly across the local region, it becomes less likely that a particular person has an immediate support network to overcome that isolation.

As a personal example: When I was a kid, there were a half dozen kids around my age all living with a block or so of me. While there was a concern of child predators and abductions, by and large people still let their kids go outside, and kids by and large still snuck off to go have fun with friends (my parents were however one of the 'shut in' types, up until I was around 10 or so, at which point I was allowed to bike to school (mostly because my mom had better things to do than actually bother to take me to school or pick me up on time.) In addition to this there was at least one empty field per block (1/4 to 1/2 mile square) which usually lead to a congregation point for the kids. Fast forward 10-20 years and all those fields have been fenced in or built over. Most parents are more concerned about the appearance of their children's safety in regards to allowing them out in the neighborhood, and kids by and large would rather play videogames/watch tv/on a computer than go outside and do stuff, whether hanging out with friends, terrorizing neighbors, or finding field replacements to hang out in.

Re:Cultural sickness.

[ZorinLynx]

>all those fields have been fenced in

It's really sad how fear of lawsuits has forced property owners to fence in fields that would otherwise serve as open space for kids to play in urban areas. I so often see a nice field of grass fenced in with nothing on it, that no one can use. The property owner probably doesn't care if kids play on his land, he's just worried about a lawsuit if those kids get hurt on that land.

Same thing with school athletic fields. When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s the fields were open to the public. There was usually a gate with some posts to keep vehicles out, but us kids could go in and play ball or do whatever on the field when school was out. Now it's all locked down because the school is afraid of lawsuits.

Paranoia has made life less fun for kids. :(

Re:Cultural sickness.

[Ichijo]

Even worse, the kind of land use patterns that encourage social interaction have been outlawed in much of the USA. We are no longer allowed to build cities the way we used to.

Re:Cultural sickness.

[johannesg]

Don't underestimate the car. In the not too distant past, you would live close to work, and most likely not too far from where you were born, in a community you'd consider to be yours. Now you can live a vast distance from work. Your coworkers are people from other communities as well, so there is no bond there, and you don't spend enough time at home to build meaningful bonds in your local community either.

Slashdot much?

[shanen]

I'm sure you're going for the funny mod, and I hope you get it, but you're on the edge of insight, too. Superficial network-mediated social relationships are no substitute for the real thing, and human beings are extremely social animals. My joke on the topic (from many years ago) is that too much computer usage is not good for your mental health.

Slashdot is quite bad, but Facebook is vastly worse.

Could technology help solve these problems rather than make them worse? I think so, but it would require different economic models than are currently being used. In the worst-case example of Facebook, the primary metric driving their "success" has nothing to do with improving your social life or helping you find real friends (not to be confused with whatever Facebook means by their increasingly bizarre use of that word). Facebook just wants you to waste as much time as possible on their website.

Re:Slashdot much?

[arth1]

Slashdot is quite bad, but Facebook is vastly worse.

I think part of the problem is that people get spread too thin. When you have 500 friends, you really have no friends. Exclusive time and confidentiality disappears. It's not the frequency of contact that makes friendship, it's the depth.

That said, some people function better alone. And some need a social network. Our species does so well at least in part because we differ so much. What one person can't handle, another one can.

Re:Slashdot much?

[shanen]

Well, I think I mostly agree with you, but I also think the 'social quality' of Slashdot has declined substantially over the years. Not just limited to Slashdot, but when we first started this computer-supported social-networking stuff it was mostly as support for face-to-face social gatherings. In those days the hub nodes were called BBSes, and most of the major ones sponsored periodic gatherings or at least occasional parties. Getting fuzzy from so long ago, but I think there were weekly Lep Lunches and monthly meetings of the Dull Men's Club, and a variety of other meetings of various kinds... This was back in Austin in the '80s...

Don't know the demographics, but I suspect a majority of today's Slashdotters hadn't been born yet.

Re:Slashdot much?

[Kjella]

I think part of the problem is that people get spread too thin. When you have 500 friends, you really have no friends. Exclusive time and confidentiality disappears. It's not the frequency of contact that makes friendship, it's the depth.

I think it quite quickly sorts into tiers anyway, because in the real world you're only one place at a time. If you hang out with group A of friends on the weekends, you're not hanging out with group B. Or for that matter how you balance friends/family/partner/self-time, obviously if you have a wife and kids you don't have the same time as when you were single but there's still a large degree of choice. I can feel it on something so trivial as when we're playing a four player online co-op game, who's first to be asked and who's just backup if the others are unavailable.

Everybody else you're really just an observer and not part of their lives. I don't want to undersell Facebook either because I understand the feeling of taking parts in your grandkids' lives without actually being physically present, but when it comes to creating real bonds of friendship and family you have to be there and really interact with them. Even when we're just alone together, like when my buddy and I go out flying our drones we each fly our own drone but it's a shared experience. If I did it and posted on my Facebook and he did it and posted on his Facebook it wouldn't be the same at all.

Re:Slashdot much?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

My sister has 1500 facebook friends

And how many actual, real-life friends does she have? That is, people she's actually met once or twice face to face? How many does she actually do stuff with on any kind of regular or semi-regular basis? Would she still be 'friends' with them if her internet connection went down for a few years?

Facebook friends aren't friends, they're just people who clicked on a link. It's like claiming that "I'm the Ruler Of The Entire Universe", as long as you count my chair as "the entire universe".

Personally I think Facebook has done more to separate and isolate people that it's done to bring them together. Oh sure, it can foster communication, but that's not the same thing by any means.

hmm

[Ol Olsoc]

What about if you find being around other people stressful? I know plenty of people - myself included - who need to get away from others from time to time because being around other people just drains my batteries big time. It isn't shyness, I'm completely socialized, and not remotely awkward. But I find being around others stressful at times. I guess that you might describe it as how some people are afraid of public speaking. I can stand and deliver all day without a hitch, without a bit of nervousness - but after the evening's socialization, I need a day or two to recharge.

This benefits whom?

[flacco]

I'm trying to figure out what bullshit rip-off "service" sponsored this article.

If I have to fall back on inflation

[rsilvergun]

to make my debt affordable then something is very, very wrong with the economy.

You're right about the monetary system being used to balance things, but it's just a temporary patch on a broken system. People have come to expect (reasonable I'd say) improved quality of life. This generation is on track to the be first one American history to be worse off overall.

Alone vs being lonely

[JoeyRox]

I can certainly see how feeling lonely can lead to ill health effects. However feeling lonely and being alone are two different animals. One is a state of mind while the other is just a state of proximity.

One additional symptom

[Trachman]

That is denial.

Denial that social isolation is harming. Look, even in this thread there are so many people who are saying that they are happy alone.

More importantly, many magazines for women are pushing never ending message (never supported scientifically), that older women, after divorce are just better off.

Increase in mortality by an average of 30% would normally be declared an epidemic health hazard, on par with smoking and obesity.

Another fascinating fact is that probably a fifth of adults in USA are (or were) on antidepressants. Other studies have shown that having a partner, or a friend, to whom you can talk to, drastically reduces depression risk.

Finally, the ultimate statistical fact. In USA average life expectancy is 79.3 years (source: wiki). Costa Rica has life expectancy of 79.6 yrs, and Albania has 77.8, while Costa Rica spends one tenth of US healthcare spendings and Albania spends one thirtieth of US healthcare spendings?

Perhaps there is something wrong with US? Also, it is so difficult not to be suspicious that many purely american phenomena are known to the number crunchers, yet are allowed to stay the way the are intentionally.

Re:Because

[Anonymous Coward]

A BMW is not enough, you also need to be charming, muscular and have a huge penis. But more money can always make up for your lacking qualities.

Has society created a life worth living?

[geekmux]

There are many aspects we can look at that created this mess, but one that seems to be overlooked here is the concept that people don't want to grow old anymore. Sadly, many find they can't afford to. Think the average Millennial is looking forward to retirement when they can barely afford to make ends meet? What's the point of growing old when you're going to be forced to blow your entire retirement nest egg on some major health issue that will inevitably crop up?

The constant threat of liability leading to lawsuits forces most of us to waste our incomes on countless forms of insurance. The social media lifestyles of the narcissistic elite are held high on an entertainment pedestal, and I wonder how watching that shit doesn't ultimately feed depression. Life is hard these days because it isn't getting any cheaper, and that chasm between the 99% and the 1% sure as hell isn't getting smaller, so don't assume Greed who helped create this mess is going to suddenly find compassion.

As if all that wasn't bad enough, here comes automation and AI to help shrink the human worth down to nothing.

It's sickening. Literally.

Re:Because

[buddyglass]

Refusal and/or inability to trust will ensure you remain lonely even when you're in a relationship. It's also somewhat of a fallacy to assume every woman, or even the majority of women, are like your ex-wife. This assumes your description of why she left you is accurate. If the truth is closer to "I lost my job then sat on my ass for six months and played video games" then it may be entirely reasonable to suspect most women are like your ex-wife.