Can changing how we think about being alone reduce loneliness?

Study reveals that how we think about being alone—shaped by media and public health campaigns—can determine whether solitude brings peace or deepens loneliness. Can changing the narrative transform how we experience alone time?

Article: How people think about being alone shapes their experience of loneliness. Image Credit: Jorm Sangsorn / Shutterstock

In a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers evaluated the contributions of media and personal beliefs about being alone in shaping people’s experiences of loneliness. For this study, they reviewed contemporary U.S. news articles and conducted multi-method investigations, including experience-sampling studies and controlled experiments, across multiple nations.

Study findings revealed that news articles are far more likely (up to 10-fold) to refer to ‘being alone’ in a negative light than positive, significantly altering personal beliefs among consumers. Headlines were also nearly twice as likely to be negative as neutral, reinforcing these perceptions.

These beliefs then tie into loneliness risk, with people who view ‘being alone’ in a negative light being at far higher loneliness risk than their positive-minded counterparts. In a two-week experience-sampling study, individuals who believed that being alone was harmful reported a 53% increase in loneliness after spending time alone, whereas those with positive beliefs experienced a 13% decrease. These findings are consistent across at least nine nations (six continents), highlighting their generalizability.

Together, these results call for a more balanced approach in media and public health campaigns, one that acknowledges both the potential benefits and risks of alone time, to address today’s growing loneliness pandemic.

Background

Loneliness is a feeling of isolation, abandonment, or disconnect from others. It is a common occurrence, with global estimates ranging from 26-41% of all humans suffering. Loneliness is an alarming public health concern, often referred to as a worldwide epidemic given its medical outcomes, including depression, cardiovascular disease, and even premature death.

Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States (US) Surgeon General’s Advisory have declared loneliness a significant health concern (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 impacts of these campaigns remain unresearched. Notably, some scientists hypothesize that the negative framing in these ‘cautionary and alarmist’ campaigns may paradoxically increase people’s risk of loneliness by fostering negative beliefs about being alone.

About the Study

The present study seeks to elucidate if people’s beliefs about ‘being alone’ influence their risks of loneliness when faced with time alone. It reviews and statistically synthesizes the findings of five independent investigations studying:

1. The content of U.S. news articles addressing being alone,
2. The causal relationship between portrayals of loneliness and consumers’ perceptions of being alone,
3. The relationship between perceptions and loneliness risk, and
4. The global generalizability of these findings.

Study data was obtained from the Open Science Framework’s publicly available datasets, with R software used for statistical analyses. Since multiple coders were used for data analyses, Cohen’s Kappa κ index was used to ensure intercoder reliability.

Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tests were run to estimate the inter-country and inter-culture differences in participants’ loneliness beliefs. The study also accounted for important cultural dimensions, such as individualism-collectivism and relational mobility, which influence perceptions of solitude. Models were adjusted for demographics (age and gender).

Study Findings

The U.S. media discourse study analyzed 144 articles published between 2020 and 2022 and found that these articles were 10 times more likely to frame the act of being alone in a negative sense than positively. Similarly, headlines were almost twice as likely to be negative rather than neutral. Alarmingly, articles were significantly more likely to underscore loneliness’s risks 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 about being alone significantly shifts people’s perceptions toward viewing solitude as harmful compared to controls, while the reverse is true for people exposed to media reporting the benefits of transient alone time.

The third study expands these perceptions and beliefs into the feelings of loneliness in daily life, finding that people who believed being alone is harmful were substantially more likely to suffer from loneliness when left alone, even for short (2-week-long) periods.

“For people reporting an average level of loneliness at the previous time point, those with negative beliefs reported a 53% increase in loneliness after spending ‘a great deal of time alone,’ whereas those with positive beliefs reported a 13% decrease in loneliness after spending the same amount of time by themselves.”

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

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

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

Conclusions

The present study reveals a direct yet multistep association 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 solitude but also exacerbates loneliness when people find themselves alone.

These findings are essential in sensitizing public health and media campaigns to address loneliness, not merely by warning against it but by fostering more positive and balanced perspectives on alone time.

“…Programs could be developed to foster more positive beliefs about the time we spend alone and motivate people to engage in activities that provide intrinsic enjoyment or promote personal growth when alone. Targeting such beliefs may constitute a novel and cost-effective intervention strategy, particularly benefiting those at greater risk of loneliness—people who spend the most time alone.”