Will You Become Lonely as You Age?

Loneliness, the subjective feeling of a lack of meaningful social connections or a sense of belongingness, is a pervasive and distressing phenomenon affecting individuals across various age groups and populations. It remains a robust field of study given the number of people who experience it, either situationally or persistently. Because loneliness is a pervasive emotional experience, research has examined the way loneliness is experienced within certain populations such as older men,¹ adolescents,² and other specific groups. But one common denominator that often permeates such research is the impact of age.

Source: Ingela Skullman / Pixabay

Loneliness Across the Lifespan

Eileen K. Graham et al. (2024) examined whether people become lonelier as they age.³ Recognizing loneliness as a “pervasive experience” that negatively impacts both health and well-being, they sought to explore what types of factors impact the way the experience changes over the lifespan.

Analyzing data from 128,118 participants ranging in age from 13 to 103 years and from more than 20 countries, they found that the experience of loneliness follows a U-shaped curve, declining from the period of young adulthood to midlife, and then increasing during older adulthood. Although they noted that some general factors impacted levels of loneliness, such as marital status, gender, education, and physical function, few of them moderated the course of the loneliness experience. Graham et al. recognize that the dynamic nature of loneliness emphasizes the need for targeted interventions throughout adulthood.

Older Adults Are Becoming Less Lonely

Other research shows that older adults are less lonely today than their older peers. Bianca Suanet et al. (2024) studied historical changes in the loneliness trajectory of older adults.⁴ Using 1,068 age-matched longitudinal reports from the German city of Berlin, their results revealed that at 79 years old, subjects reported substantially lower levels of loneliness than subjects born 20 years earlier. However, they also found that age trajectories were the same when it came to differences in changes in the levels of experienced loneliness over time. They found the differences in rates of within-person changes were due to differences in education, gender, cognitive functioning, and beliefs about external control.

The Support of Social Networks

Suanet et al. note that in terms of public significance, their research fails to support the commonly cited view that there is a “loneliness epidemic” within Western societies because they found levels of loneliness are lower in older adults as compared to later-born peers. Among the explanations for the difference is the recognition that an increase in resources provides the opportunity to build a beneficial social network, which is an observation strongly relevant to all age groups today. As a practical observation, this may be true both in person and online for more recently born older adults, because social media connections have become one of the ways older adults can stay in touch, even if their mobility is restricted later in life.

Becoming aware of signs and symptoms of loneliness among family, friends, and peers of all ages can empower us to expand and strengthen networks of support to everyone within our sphere of influence, to encourage and care for each other.