Loneliness: Friend or Foe?

In modern society, loneliness is becoming more ubiquitous as we increasingly move towards digital means of communication. The World Health Organisation has previously declared loneliness to be a global health concern (Johnson, 2023). Although it is thought that the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated this problem of loneliness due to restrictions on social activity, the feeling of loneliness has been defined and experienced since antiquity. The American writer Thomas Wolfe stated in his 1930s essay God’s Lonely Man that, “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”

With that in mind, let us first define loneliness properly. Loneliness is an emotional response to the individual’s perceived lack of social connection. It differs from solitude; not everyone who is alone feels lonely. It is important to recognise the different types of loneliness (Weiss, 1985), because the ways in which we can satisfy one type of loneliness may fail to satisfy the other type. The first type of loneliness, which is what most people associate with the word loneliness, is social loneliness. This is experienced due to a lack of a strong social network, where people feel a lack of friendship or social interaction. The second type of loneliness is emotional loneliness, resulting from a dearth of deep and nurturing relationships with other people. This is most often fulfilled by close family relationships, close friends or romantic partners. This type of loneliness could also be further categorised into family loneliness and romantic loneliness. Aside from these forms of loneliness, the temporality of loneliness is also important. Transient, or short-term loneliness, is only temporary in nature and quickly relieved as soon as whatever is getting in the way of socialisation is removed.

It is often considered beneficial, as a motivational emotion that drives individuals to strengthen their social bonds. On the other hand, chronic or long-term loneliness is far more harmful, as social isolation over a long period of time can lead to certain behavioral and cognitive changes that make it more difficult to socialise, such as hypervigilance and cynicism, making it self-reinforcing. Emotional loneliness is more often associated with chronic loneliness, as a lack of meaningful relationships is often much harder to rectify than a simple lack of social interaction, making it more harmful to the individual. Greater experiences of loneliness have been found to be strongly associated with smaller social networks (amount of contact with friends and family), less social capital (a measure including enjoyment of life and meaningful contact with neighbors), more severe affective symptoms (including anxiety, depression and guilt) and a larger long-term mental illness history (Wang et al., 2019). These indicate that long-term experiences of loneliness can be a serious mental health issue if not dealt with.

Negative emotions like anger or sadness are often seen as unwelcome or inconvenient, because they influence our judgment and without proper cognitive regulation can lead to adverse effects on both mental and physical health (Ochsner et al., 2002). However, these emotions are important because they tell us when some of our needs are not being met, according to our instincts. Without paying attention to and caring for your emotions, they can also spiral out of control and hijack the mind, creating a powerful motivational force that might cause negative actions that are unwarranted or unjustified. In this vein, loneliness is another emotion spurring you to take action because something in your environment does not sit well with you, much like how hunger spurs you to eat or pain spurs you to remove yourself from the source of it. Being aware of your loneliness and accepting it calmly rather than disowning or suppressing it is one of the first steps towards dealing with it in a constructive manner. Sitting with loneliness without taking steps to resolve it through social connection can build more maladaptive cognitions or beliefs in the mind which in turn makes it more difficult for an individual to maintain their existing relationships or even build new ones.

So what exactly does loneliness tell us? It drives us to seek out connections with our fellow people. Research has shown that subjective loneliness influences a person’s attention to human faces and other social information in general (Saito et al., 2020). Being lonely naturally drives us to find and make positive and cooperative relationships with others, as we all know, and this is how most people resolve their feelings of loneliness. But there are many people with wide social networks who nevertheless feel that same sense of emptiness and despondency. This points toward another fundamental function of loneliness, which is to spur us toward meaningful purpose. This most commonly takes the form of taking action that feels like it matters, usually to help a community or peer of some kind. It is also how people can acquire many surface level friends without ever resolving their feelings of loneliness. Without closeness and intimacy in friendships, these friendships are unlikely to mean much to the individuals involved. A lack of deep friendships and meaningful social interaction often precipitates feelings of loneliness (Kripke et al., 2021). It is also found that lower levels of feeling like one matters, especially to peers, is associated with higher levels of loneliness (McComb et al., 2020). At its core, loneliness implores us to connect with others, so that we can glean greater meaning and a higher purpose from our lives.

Aside from the feeling of loneliness that drives us towards others, solitude can also be a powerful catalyst for personal growth. In the past, definitions of loneliness were also taken to mean solitude, which was generally seen as a positive state outside of excess. Solitude can enhance individual self esteem, provide a space for the clarification of thoughts and feelings, and can be highly therapeutic in general (Coplan & Bowker, 2013). Many studies have also endorsed a solo experience in nature as a strong nature-based intervention linked to a number of beneficial outcomes, largely due to its distance from daily demands and technological stimuli, allowing the individual to reflect and contemplate on their values and goals in greater detail and depth (Naor & Mayseless, 2020). This space for reflection also leads to changes in the person’s self-concept as they become more assured or certain in their identity when outside stimuli are minimized. Feelings of loneliness while in this state can also be dealt with by the person being assured of their meaningful connection with others (Long & Averill, 2003).

Loneliness is a complex emotion with multiple precipitating factors and both positive and negative outcomes. However, like any other emotion, we must learn to heed the signals it sends us and manage its effect upon ourselves for us to flourish in our relationships and daily lives. With that said, the most readily available strategy for dealing with loneliness is to go out and interact more intentionally with your friends and family, to develop your bond beyond mere circumstance. In modern Singapore, social interactions are largely brief and business-like. While that is unlikely to change overnight, an intentional effort to be kind to the people close to you can go a long way in alleviating loneliness both in yourself and others.