The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that people who suffer from unwanted loneliness are twice as likely to develop depression and have a higher risk of anxiety, self-harm and suicidal ideation. Furthermore, various international meta-analyses have shown that social isolation increases the probability of premature death and is associated with cardiovascular diseases, immune system alterations and cognitive impairment.
Although it has traditionally been linked to old age, loneliness today affects adolescents and young people with special intensity, in a context marked by changes in relationship models, digital hyperconnectivity and the fragility of social ties.
Professor Fernando Chacón, an international leader in social psychology, reflects on these questions to analyze a complex phenomenon that is already emerging as one of the great health and well-being challenges of the 21st century.
How do you explain that the lack of these social ties can affect both mental and physical health?
Loneliness affects psychological and mental well-being, but also significantly affects physical health. Many mental disorders are caused by stress and a fundamental resource to face and overcome stress is the social support that friends and close people give us. This social support allows us to cushion the effect of negative stress: first with informational support that reduces worry about something we don’t know; Secondly, material support, which can be economic or participatory. But the most important thing is the emotional support of feeling heard, having people to share with. It is this social support that has the most beneficial effects on health.
What are the most vulnerable social groups?
All epidemiological studies define that adolescents and those over 75 years of age are the ones who feel the loneliest, although the reasons are quite different. Older people, it is evident, have a real loss of relationships and for many retirement is a significant loss of relationships, then come illnesses that prevent you from having many activities in which you met people and, later, you have losses due to the death of family and friends.
With young people the issue is different, because they do have the capacity to establish relationships, but the issue is with the value given to social relationships and any sign of non-acceptance or rejection is overvalued. Not having enough likes on a publication is associated with not having enough relationships. To this we must add, of course, already very regrettable processes such as bullying.
Do we need more quality than quantity in these relationships?
That is essential. Quality is more important than quantity. Even having many, very dense social relationships sometimes produces stress because the person has to respond to all of them and feels very obligated. That becomes more burdensome than satisfaction. It is important to have social relationships, but of quality and that give us true support.
Do people with strong social ties have a greater chance of longevity?
It is scientifically proven that people who have quality social relationships live longer than people who feel lonely. The meta-analysis, which is an accumulation of the studies that have been done on this topic, includes the influence of loneliness or social relationships and life expectancy as absolutely exhaustive. People who are not lonely live longer than lonely people. All the studies prove it, there are none that contradict it. This social support makes you feel less stress and we know that stress harms health because it affects the immune system, depressing it.
In an inevitably increasingly digitalized society, how does face-to-face meeting combat the so-called loneliness epidemic?
There are volunteers who go to the homes of people who live alone, because the telematic help, which was given to the elderly about 20 years ago, had an emergency button in case they needed something and the operators say that many activated it simply to talk to someone. So, these volunteer programs not only help materially to clean the houses or do the shopping, but to talk to them, listen to them. I believe that we are going to have to move forward to make preventive interventions for loneliness. But we must also be aware that loneliness, perhaps, makes a person happy, despite its risks.