Everybody knows that smoking is bad for one’s health. It’s also generally recognized that being lonely and socially isolated can be harmful to both our emotional and physical health. But can feeling lonely and isolated really be as bad for us as smoking 15 cigarettes a day? Or drinking six alcoholic drinks a day?
An official advisory by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy answered this question with a surprising “yes,” citing 325 previously published research studies and articles about our increasingly disconnected American society. After reviewing these articles and taking a nationwide tour with in-depth interviews of Americans last year, Dr. Murthy issued the 2023 Surgeon General’s Advisory” “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” This 85-page document, and subsequent studies, have spelled out how social isolation can harm our individual physical health and our community health.
Key highlights of the Advisory
· Americans are reporting alarming rates of loneliness and social isolation
· Declining rates of social participation
· Reasons why social connection matters
· Impacts of technology on social connection
· Effects of social connection on individual human health
The profound effect of social isolation on health includes the decline of almost every organ system
Key highlights of the Advisory focused on how several individual health outcomes declined with increasing loneliness and social isolation. Cardiovascular status became worse with increased blood pressure and strokes. Increased diabetes, decreased cognitive function, and weakened immune system were all associated with loneliness. Anger, overall mortality, and suicide increased with growing social isolation and loneliness.
A Harvard study reviewing 23 studies involving 181,000 adults showed that loneliness, social isolation, or both were associated with a 29% increased risk of heart attack and 32% increased greater risk of stroke.
This “New Epidemic” isn’t so new
While many assume the restrictions of COVID on in-person gatherings were responsible for increases in loneliness, studies showed that this wasn’t the case. The lead author of the 2020 study, “The Trajectory of Loneliness in Response to COVID-19” offered this explanation: “…just knowing that you are not alone and that everyone is going through the same restrictions and difficulties may be enough in the short term to keep feelings of loneliness down.”
Instead, research suggests that loneliness and social isolation have been increasing over the past decades. According to Robert D. Putnamn in his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Americans have become increasingly disconnected from one another with weakening of social structures whether that included involvement in PTA, church, or community volunteering.
A Harvard 2020 study revealed that 36% of respondents reported “serious loneliness,” that is, feeling lonely “frequently” or “almost all the time or all the time.”
And polls show we’re losing friends. Almost half of a 1990 survey reporting having 1-4 friends in 1990 yet only one third reporting that same number in 2021. When it comes to having no friends, only 3% reported this in 1990, but in 2020 that number rose to an alarming 12%.
Americans report also becoming less trustful of each other. A poll from the Surgeon General’s Advisory shows that the percent of Americans who felt they could trust in each other dropped from 45% in 1972 to 30% in 2016.
What are the implications for the future if social connections continue to decrease?
The Surgeon General issued a stark warning about the dangers of this trend: “If we fail to (build a more connected society and live more connected lives), we will pay an ever-increasing price…And we will continue to splinter and divide…further retreat(ing)to our corners-angry, sick, and alone.”
The Advisory was not all gloom and doom, however; the subtitle of the Advisory notes “The Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community.” And that is what the next health news report in July will review: research on successful strategies and new discoveries on how social connections can grow and become stronger.
