The Antidote for Loneliness During The COVID-19 Pandemic — It’s Simpler Than You Think
Loneliness kills — yes, seriously.
According to a 2017 article from the Harvard Review that discusses the connection between burnout in the workplace and loneliness, loneliness does indeed have implications on our health.
Research from leading expert John Capioppo shows that loneliness has a significant impact on our psychological and physical health and can even impact our longevity in the long run.
According to a widely cited article from Capioppo and Louise C. Hawkley, loneliness has been associated with a variety of cognitive and emotional processes such as, “personality disorders and psychoses [23–25], suicide [26], impaired cognitive performance and cognitive decline over time [27–29], increased risk of Alzheimer’s Disease [29], diminished executive control [30, 31], and increases in depressive symptoms [32–35].”
Capioppo’s research is corroborated by other researchers like Sarah Pressman from the University of California Irvine, whose research shows that loneliness reduces longevity by 70%, beating out other causes of death like obesity (20%), alcoholic intake (30%), and smoking (50%).
Loneliness not only reduces longevity, but it can also increase one’s chances of developing heart disease — one of the leading causes of death in developed countries — by 30%, according to a 2015 UK study.
With all the negative impacts that loneliness can have on us, how can we combat the feeling of social isolation and what can we individually do to extend our longevity?
Turns out, the subject of loneliness and longevity has long been of interest to researchers from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest studies ever conducted in recent memory that is still conducting research today.
Headed by Robert Waldinger, the study’s fourth director since its inception during the late 1930s, the Harvard Study of Adult Development tracked 724 men over a period of 75 years to find the answer to a simple question, “What makes a good life?”
In one of the most viewed TED talks ever given, Waldinger shared findings and lessons learned from the first generation of the longitudinal study. According to Waldinger, the clearest message that emerged from the study was that, “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”
Throughout the TED talk, Waldinger broke down the three biggest lessons about relationships from the study. The first lesson was about the contrasting effects of those who have social connections and those who experience loneliness.
“It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they’re physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected,” explained Waldinger.
“And the experience of loneliness,” Waldinger went on to say, “turns out to be toxic.
“People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely.
“And the sad fact is that at any given time, more than one in five Americans will report that they’re lonely.”
The second biggest lesson from the study places an emphasis on not the number of relationships that one has, rather the quality and satisfaction in one’s close, personal relationships is what matters for a good life.
“It turns out that living in the midst of conflict is really bad for our health,” Waldinger revealed.
“High-conflict marriages, for example, without much affection, turn out to be very bad for our health, perhaps worse than getting divorced.
“And living in the midst of good, warm relationships is protective [of our health].”
The third biggest lesson on relationships and how it impacts an individual’s health is that good relationships are good not just for physical health, but for one’s neurological health as well.
Waldinger explained that those who were in securely attached relationships when they reached their 80s and had someone to rely on and lean on in times of need were found to have memories that stayed sharper for longer periods of time.
Conversely, those who were not in securely attached relationships later on in their lives experienced earlier memory decline.
“And those good relationships, they don’t have to be smooth all the time,” noted Waldinger.
“Some of our octogenarian couples could bicker with each other day in and day out, but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn’t take a toll on their memories.”
Memory is not the only neurological response that individuals tend to have when they are interacting with another person.
In a TED Talk given by renown psychologist Susan Pinker, Pinker breaks down the neuroscience of how interactions with others in a face-to-face context can prove to be beneficial neurologically for individuals.
According to Pinker, face-to-face interactions such as making eye contact, shaking hands or giving someone a high five releases the hormone oxytocin and lowers cortisol levels, which as a result, “lowers your stress.”
Pinker continues further and explains that during face-to-face interactions, the brain also generates dopamine, “which gives us a little high and it kills pain. It’s like a naturally produced morphine.”
“Now, all of this passes under our conscious radar,” continued Pinker, “which is why we conflate online activity with the real thing.”
Conflating online interactions with face-to-face interactions, of course, has taken on new meaning as the world hunkers down amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the onset of quarantining and social isolation efforts that have been taken to help mitigate the coronavirus, the rise of loneliness has become a growing concern for many, especially among young adults.
Yet, experts say, there are ways to combat loneliness, even amid the in-person restrictions of the pandemic.
In a feature titled “The Loneliness Pandemic” from the latest issue of Harvard Magazine, Jeremy Nobel, founder of The Foundation for Art & Healing, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people heal emotionally through art-focused activities, shared how his organization managed to foster social connections online.
According to the article, Nobel and his team created multiple initiatives centered on his research on how creative processes can enhance well-being and help alleviate loneliness. Among those initiatives include the “Stuck at Home Initiative” and the UnLonely Film Festival, both of which allow people to discuss artwork that they or others created in an online setting.
“It was just a way to bridge the gap,” Nobel said of the initiatives, “offering a chance to be socially connected authentically, even at a time of distancing.”
In the same article, Robert Waldinger offered his insight into the importance of connecting with others, even if doing so is hard at times.
“It’s being the one to reach out,” Waldinger says. “If you’re feeling worse about yourself or about your life, it can be hard to say, ‘I’m going to call up that friend I haven’t seen in a while.’”
Waldinger continued further by putting the pandemic into perspective when it comes to social connections.
“The one thing that the pandemic does is it really emphasizes our interconnectedness, right?” he says. “The virus doesn’t know tribes, it doesn’t know boundaries, it just doesn’t know…. And that, in some ways, is a dramatic reminder of how connected we are.”
For more tips on how to cope with loneliness during the pandemic, and how to help others that may be suffering from loneliness, check out UCHealth’s “Fight it with kindness” resource.
