Do We Really Need More Social Contact to Feel Less Lonely?

Loneliness has dramatically increased over the past several decades, is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and is a particularly pressing problem in individualistic societies—right? Although loneliness is a near-universal human experience, there remain many myths about it. In this series of articles, I’ll debunk some of them. (To read the first post in this series, on alleged dramatic increases in loneliness, click here.)

Misunderstanding: To help lonely people, we need to stimulate social interaction.

Most research papers and recent media articles about loneliness explicitly state that feeling lonely is not the same as being alone or having few social contacts. Put differently, they’re arguing that we need to distinguish loneliness from solitude and from social isolation. So far, so good.

Nevertheless, the solution most often proposed for loneliness is interventions to increase social contact. This approach seems to hardly be questioned.

Yet, logically speaking, this approach tries to erase one problem by fighting a different one. Although some people who feel lonely may benefit from interventions against social isolation, many won’t. In fact, such interventions may even backfire.

Why do people want to reduce loneliness by increasing social contact?

Loneliness, social isolation, and solitude are often confused for one another. Even people who know theoretically that these are not the same often talk about loneliness as if it was generally caused by isolation or solitude. This is surprising, as many of us have experienced loneliness without being socially isolated ourselves.¹

Yet, because the list of reasons for loneliness is long, loneliness can quickly become (too) complex to think about. People can, for example, feel lonely if they are far away from close others, are separate from a partner, lose a loved one, are struggling with life problems or need to make difficult decisions, had an emotionally distant relationship with their parents, unsuccessfully seek a romantic partner, encounter misunderstandings in their close relationships, realize that they are the only ones experiencing their own lives, and on and on.² These are just some of the many possible causes.

Why might interventions against social isolation be ineffective at reducing loneliness?

Trying to develop a one-size-fits-all intervention against loneliness is comparable to trying to develop a one-size-fits-all intervention against sadness. For one, most experiences of sadness don’t need to be addressed via formalized interventions—and neither does transient loneliness. If sadness (or loneliness) becomes persistent or overwhelming, however, it then makes more sense to target the cause of the feeling rather than the symptom itself.

Will meeting any random person ease the pain of unreciprocated love, provide us with the acceptance that we don’t perceive among our friends, or solve the often overwhelming problems we face? For some very lucky people, this random other might indeed be their long-sought soulmate, or a parental figure with the positive regard that no one provided in the person’s childhood. For others, it may distract them and temporarily ease their pain. For many, however, it will simply not address the reason why they feel lonely.

Additionally, even people who are socially isolated may not always benefit from social contact. After all, they may have withdrawn in reaction to rejection by others, for example, or to not feeling understood or not easily picking up on negative social feedback. For instance, this may be because they belong to stigmatized groups, do not fit social norms in the culture they live in, or had experiences of rejection in their childhood.^2,3

Similarly, people who are easily exhausted by social contact may be more likely to socially withdraw, despite sometimes longing for more social interaction. Therefore, the reason for social withdrawal can be that social contact tends to be unpleasant or overwhelming—and such a dynamic will often not be changed by engaging in more social activities.

Loneliness Essential Reads

Is a Dog or a Cat Better at Relieving Loneliness?

Is It Bad for Kids to Feel Lonely?

Why can interventions against social isolation backfire?

You may argue that, even if they don’t help, interventions to increase social contact can’t do much harm. However, social interaction with people whom we perceive to not understand us or to even reject us is likely to increase loneliness. Indeed, many people even define loneliness as not feeling understood.²

To illustrate this, think of trying to make small talk with a random stranger on a day when you feel shy and anxious. Loneliness has often been found to be related to more shyness, more anxiety, and lower self-esteem.⁴

What are the chances that you will feel understood in a situation like this? They are probably rather low—especially as loneliness has also been found to make us perceive others in more hostile ways, expect them to have more negative intentions, expect to be rejected by others more, and interpret their reactions as more rejecting.^3,5

Finally, people who feel lonely seem to often act in relatively more hostile or socially awkward ways.⁶ In an intervention for lonely people, it is likely that you will talk to another person feeling lonely. Consequently, both of you may appear more hostile or socially awkward than an average conversation partner. Thus, even if you have more social contact, this type of social contact may remind you of not feeling connected, feeling misunderstood, or feeling rejected when with others—which is likely to make you feel lonelier rather than less lonely.

Additionally, one-size-fits-all interventions against loneliness create a stereotype of what loneliness is—namely, always the result of too little social contact. Consequently, many people who feel lonely may not feel addressed by these interventions (and righteously so). They may also be more resistant to admitting that they feel lonely: In our achievement-focused societies, not having managed to build a social network can be viewed as shameful.

Clearly, our weaknesses are hardly personal choices and should, as such, not be shameful in the first place. Yet, in this sort of culture, why would one want to be ascribed a weakness that one doesn’t even have?

Even more problematically, people who have a social network but feel lonely nevertheless may feel left out by policy and alone with their experiences. And every time we feel alone with a problem or different from others, our risk for loneliness increases again.

Should we then have fewer interventions against social isolation?

Don’t get me wrong: We do need interventions against social isolation. Social isolation is a risk factor for health just as loneliness is.⁶ Additionally, the time that people spend alone and their independence from each other have increased over the past decades, at least in Western societies.⁷

Nevertheless, interventions against social isolation may simply not be most effective when the aim is to address the subjective experience of loneliness. Instead, we would need a variety of different interventions—and these should target different causes for severe and long-lasting loneliness rather than try to quickly fix the symptom of loneliness.