Being Alone Has Benefits — But How Much Is Too Much? (M)
Solitude may offer the chance for self-exploration and self-connection, but how much is too much?
Category: Loneliness
The Art Of Living Alone Without Being Lonely (M)
About 40 percent of people in this study reported that they were happy living alone.
This Amount Of Alone Time Leads To Loneliness (M)
For many people merely being alone does not necessarily mean feeling lonely.
Lonely Brains Represent Real And Fictional People In The Same Way (M)
It may be that people use fictional characters to fill a space that is missing in their real lives.
An Easy Way to Reduce Depression And Loneliness
Reducing loneliness and depression could be as simple as this…
Reducing loneliness and depression could be as simple as this…
Limiting social media to 30 minutes per day decreases feelings of loneliness and depression, research finds.
The study strongly suggests that excessive social media use makes people more depressed and lonely.
It is also ironic that less ‘social’ media use reduces feelings of loneliness.
For the study, 143 college students were tracked for three weeks.
Half were told to use social media as normal, while the other half were instructed to limit it to 30 minutes per day.
All reported their use of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram along with feelings of anxiety, depression, loneliness and fear of missing out.
Dr Melissa G. Hunt, the study’s first author, explained the results:
“Here’s the bottom line.
Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness.
These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study.”
Dr Hunt does not think young people should stop using social media all together.
Limiting screen time, though, seems sensible, she says:
“It is a little ironic that reducing your use of social media actually makes you feel less lonely.
Some of the existing literature on social media suggests there’s an enormous amount of social comparison that happens.
When you look at other people’s lives, particularly on Instagram, it’s easy to conclude that everyone else’s life is cooler or better than yours.”
Dr Hunt concluded:
“When you’re not busy getting sucked into clickbait social media, you’re actually spending more time on things that are more likely to make you feel better about your life.
In general, I would say, put your phone down and be with the people in your life.”
The study was published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology (Hunt et al., 2018).
The Effect Of Social Isolation On The Brain (M)
Over one-third of US adults over 45 report feeling lonely and among those over 65, one-quarter feel socially isolated.
These Vital Values Protect Everyone Against Loneliness (M)
Loneliness and social isolation are just as threatening to health, if not more so, than obesity.
The Emotion That May Cause Type-2 Diabetes
The emotion causes consistent stress to the body, which may hasten the onset of diabetes.
The emotion causes consistent stress to the body, which may hasten the onset of diabetes.
Prolonged loneliness can lead to type-2 diabetes, research suggests.
An absence of deep, positive relationships is the key factor, rather than a simple lack of contact.
In other words, one can still be lonely in a crowd.
One-third of adults in the US report that they feel lonely at least some of the time.
The same figure for the UK is one-in-five.
It is not known exactly why loneliness is linked to type-2 diabetes.
One possible explanation is that loneliness causes consistent stress to the body, which hastens the onset of the disease.
Dr Ruth Hackett, the study’s first author, said:
“The study shows a strong relationship between loneliness and the later onset of type 2 diabetes.
What is particularly striking is that this relationship is robust even when factors that are important in diabetes development are taken into account such as smoking, alcohol intake and blood glucose as well as mental health factors such as depression.
The study also demonstrates a clear distinction between loneliness and social isolation in that isolation or living alone does not predict type 2 diabetes whereas loneliness, which is defined by a person’s quality of relationships, does.”
The study included 4,112 people aged over 50 who were tracked over 15 years.
During this period, 264 people developed type 2 diabetes, with lonely people at a higher risk.
Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects how the body turns food into energy.
It means that the body finds it difficult to keep blood sugar at normal levels.
Diabetes can cause serious health problems, such as heart and kidney disease as well as vision loss.
Dr Hackett said:
“I came up with the idea for the research during UK lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic as I became increasingly aware and interested in how loneliness may affect our health, especially as it is likely that many more people were experiencing this difficult emotion during this period.”
Stress linked to loneliness may be causing diabetes, said Dr Hackett:
“If the feeling of loneliness becomes chronic.
Then everyday you’re stimulating the stress system and over time that leads to wear and tear on your body and those negative changes in stress-related biology may be linked to type 2 diabetes development.”
The study was published in the journal Diabetologia (Hackett et al., 2020).
Loneliness Has A Toxic Effect On Brain Activity — May Explain The Condition (M)
Why lonely people feel different and may find it hard to connect with their peers.
Being Alone Has An Astonishing Effect On Energy Levels (M)
When cut off from other people we develop a craving for them that is similar to hunger.
