Why do young people and adults experience loneliness differently?

Feelings of loneliness are experienced from time to timeall people, without exception, regardless of gender, age, social status and other factors. And this feeling, although it is natural, over time can cause psychological and physiological diseases. Researchers from different parts of the world are carefully studying the nature of this phenomenon and recently a Dutch group decided to find out what ages people feel most lonely and what causes this feeling. It turned out that the reasons for loneliness strongly depend on age. For example, young people feel unnecessary if they don't socialize with friends for a long time. But people over 50 want to have as much contact with their family as possible. But let's take a closer look at the study - why did the scientists come to such conclusions and are confident in their observations?

It is important for seniors to stay in touch with family

The consequences of loneliness

That a long stay alonecan cause mental problems and physiological diseases, scientists have known for a long time. Isolation from society leads to depression, and this was proven in an experiment in which poker player Rich Alati spent an entire month in a room with a bed, refrigerator and toilet. I already talked about this experiment in this material and, in short, the man earned himself sleep problems, depression and fatigue.

Once a man spent a month alone and nothing good came of it.

And the fact that loneliness leads to the development of suchdiseases, like heart disease, were proved by British scientists in 2016. As part of the scientific work, the results of which were published in the scientific journal Heart, they examined the results of 23 studies. They took into account the data of about 181 thousand people. Observations have shown that single people are 29% more likely to suffer from a heart attack than socially active volunteers. Moreover, it turned out that this is relevant for all people, regardless of their age. So, loneliness is more harmful than good. At least, such a conclusion can be made based on the results of scientific work.

The reasons for loneliness

Within the framework of a new scientific work, about which it wastold in the journal BMC Public Health, scientists have found that the reasons for loneliness in people of different ages are different. They managed to conduct a survey among more than 26 thousand residents of the Netherlands aged 19 to 65 years. In addition to answering questions like "how often do you engage yourself alone?" the scientists collected data on educational level, marital status, frequency of communication with relatives and friends, as well as on the health status of volunteers.

See also: How can technology help you cope with loneliness?

Based on the collected data, the researchers divided people into three age groups:

• young people, aged 19 to 34;
• middle-aged people, from 35 to 49 years old;
• aged people, between the ages of 50 and 65.

The survey showed that loneliness haunts39.7% of young people. Among the representatives of middle age, 43.3% of single individuals were identified. But the elderly turned out to be the loneliest - their share was as much as 48.2%. Using additional data collected from the survey, the researchers identified the reasons why people begin to feel that they are not needed by anyone. To their surprise, scientists have found that people of different ages experience loneliness for completely different reasons.

Young people feel lonely when there are no friends around

The reasons for loneliness were distributed as follows:

• young people feel useless to anyone with a lack of money, an unstable psychological state such as depression and a lack of communication with friends;
• middle-aged people experience loneliness due to reasons common to both young and old people. Apparently, it all depends on the individual characteristics of each person;
• aged people feel lonely if you havephysiological diseases, and with a lack of communication with relatives. Volunteers over 50, who spoke with their families less than once every two weeks, felt the most lonely.

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So, within the framework of scientific work, researchersproved that the feeling of loneliness in people of different ages occurs for different reasons. But they themselves admit that the research is superficial and that this result is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, there are more subtle causal relationships in the emergence of feelings of loneliness. Only to identify them, it is necessary to conduct more long-term studies, in which the condition of people must be monitored for several decades.