Can changing how we think about being alone reduce loneliness?

Can changing how we think about being alone reduce loneliness?

The study shows how wethinkWhen You Are Alone – through media and public health campaigns – can determine whether loneliness brings peace or deepens loneliness. Can the narrative change how we experience time alone?

In a study recently published in the journalNature communicationThe researchers assessed the contributions of media and personal beliefs in shaping people's experiences of loneliness alone. For this study, they reviewed contemporary US news articles and conducted multi-method research, including multi-nation experience and controlled experiments.

Media exposure effects accumulate over time - the study highlights that repeated exposure to negative news about being alone can gradually reinforce harmful beliefs and make people more vulnerable to loneliness in the long term.

The study results found that news articles are far more likely (up to 10 times) to refer to “alone” in a negative light than positively, significantly altering personal beliefs among consumers. The headlines were also almost twice as likely to be neutral, reinforcing these perceptions.

These beliefs then combine to create loneliness risk, with people who view “alone” in a negative light being at far higher risk than their positive counterparts. In a two-week experience-sampling study, people who believed that alone was harmful reported a 53% increase in loneliness after time alone, while those with positive beliefs decreased by 13%. These results are consistent across at least nine nations (six continents), highlighting their generalizability.

Together, these findings call for a more balanced approach to media and public health campaigns that recognizes both the potential benefits and risks of time alone to address today's growth pandemic.

background

Loneliness is a feeling of isolation, abandonment or separation from others. It is a common occurrence, with global estimates ranging between 26 and 41% of all human suffering. Loneliness is an alarming public health problem, often described as a global epidemic given medical outcomes including depression, cardiovascular disease, and even premature death.

Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Surgeon General's Advice have declared loneliness a significant health problem (2019 and 2023, respectively).

The growing fear of loneliness has prompted several public health campaigns and media articles to campaign against the condition. Unfortunately, the effects of these campaigns remain undisturbed. Notably, some scholars have hypothesized that the negative framing in these “cautionary and alarmist” campaigns may paradoxically increase people's risk of loneliness by promoting negative beliefs about aloneness.

About the study

The present study seeks to elucidate whether people's beliefs about being “alone” influence their risks of loneliness when faced with time alone. It statistically reviews and synthesizes the results of five independent investigations that examine:

1. Der Inhalt von US -Nachrichtenartikeln, die sich allein befassen, allein zu sein,
2. Die kausale Beziehung zwischen Darstellungen der Einsamkeit und der Wahrnehmung der Verbraucher, allein zu sein,
3. Die Beziehung zwischen Wahrnehmungen und Einsamkeitsrisiko und
4. Die globale Generalisierbarkeit dieser Ergebnisse.

The study data were obtained from the publicly available Open Science Framework datasets, using R software for statistical analysis. Because multiple coders were used for data analysis, Cohen's kappa index was used to ensure intercoiter reliability.

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests were conducted to estimate cross-country and cross-cultural differences in participants' loneliness levels. The study also identified important cultural dimensions such as individualism-collection and relational mobility that influence perceptions of loneliness. The models were adjusted for demographic data (age and gender).

Study results

Alone isn't always bad - the study highlights that loneliness can improve well-being, creativity and emotional regulation, but only if people approach it with a positive mindset rather than seeing it as forced isolation.

The US media discourse study analyzed 144 articles published between 2020 and 2022 and found that these articles framed the act of being alone in a negative sense ten times more often than positively. Similarly, headlines were almost twice as likely to be negative as neutral. Alarmingly, articles were significantly more likely to emphasize the risks of loneliness than its benefits (5-fold) or make neutral statements about the condition (7-fold).

The second study highlights that even brief exposure to negative articles and media alone increase people's perceptions of being harmful compared to controls, while the opposite is true for individuals exposed to media reporting the benefits of temporary alone time.

The third study extends these perceptions and beliefs into feelings of loneliness in daily life, finding that people who believed they were harmful were significantly more likely to experience loneliness when left alone for short (2 weeks) periods.

“For people who reported average levels of loneliness at the earlier time point, those with negative beliefs reported a 53% increase in loneliness after spending a lot of time alone,” while those with positive beliefs saw a decrease in loneliness after spending the same amount of time alone. “

The fourth study compared loneliness trends in U.S. and Japanese citizens. The latter cohort was found to have more positive beliefs about fighting alone than the former, and these results were highly correlated with the levels of loneliness identified in these two cultural cohorts. The study suggests that Japan's collectivist culture may frame loneliness as a necessary and even restorative escape from social pressures, while Western cultures often encounter social isolation alone.

These results were consistent when the context was expanded to nine countries (Brazil, United Kingdom, South Africa, Spain, Mexico, Poland, and Australia) using data from the Global Thriving Study (2024).

Countries designated as high loneliness clusters were found to have more negative beliefs about being alone than moderate loneliness clusters, which had more negative beliefs than the generally positive low loneliness countries. This suggests that societal attitudes toward loneliness, shaped in part by media and public discourse, may be a key factor in national loneliness trends.

Conclusions

The present study shows a direct but multi-level relationship between media exposure and loneliness prevalence. It highlights how the generally negative (cautionary) tone of public health and media articles not only reinforces negative beliefs about loneliness, but also exacerbates loneliness when people find themselves alone.

These findings are essential for raising public health and media awareness campaigns to address loneliness, not only by warning against it, but also by providing more positive and balanced perspectives at the time.

"...programs could be developed to promote more positive beliefs about the time we spend alone and to motivate people to engage in activities that provide intrinsic pleasure or promote personal growth when alone. Looking at themselves alone."

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