Public health is affected not only by the obvious factors – diseases, lifestyle-related health problems, injuries and heredity – but also by developments that tend to remain outside the daily sight, and one of them is loneliness, especially among seniors, writes USA Today.
Longevity expert Ken Stern says that when he writes a weekly advice column on social connections, he often receives comments in which seniors admit that they don’t know how to make friends, feel isolated in their homes or express concern that they will lose all their friends after retirement. He writes that giving advice to people over 50 was not among his career goals, but the field is bustling, because in a country and a world with a rapidly aging population, the fear of becoming lonely and losing the community around them is growing.
Loneliness has a serious impact on health, especially in the second half of life, when both physical and mental health tend to decline. More and more people are aware that loneliness is linked to health, from cardiovascular disease to diabetes and dementia, but they are still surprised that researchers have found that loneliness can be compared to smoking about 15 cigarettes a day. A study conducted by the non-profit organization AARP found that 40% of Americans over the age of 45 are lonely; in the organization’s 2010 and 2018 surveys, 35% of people in that age group identified themselves as lonely.
Loneliness is not evenly distributed. Men are at higher risk of becoming lonely, and people who are unemployed; those who earn less than 25,000 dollars a year; residents of rural areas and people who identify as belonging to the LGBTQ+ community are also more prone to loneliness. Conversely, while no one is immune to loneliness, those who are well-educated, wealthy, or over 70 are in a better position.
Stern acknowledges that
there is no stage in life when loneliness is completely avoidable,
but it should become a public health concern in the latter half of life. Not only because loneliness is becoming more common, but also because the U.S. population is aging. If you look at an AARP study, you can calculate that there are currently more than 50 million adults over the age of 45 in the US who feel lonely, and that is a public health crisis.
The AARP study provides clues to the reason for the decline in social connections. It is not that people have become less friendly than they were a decade ago, but they are much less involved in activities that allow them to connect. Socializing has been declining since the 1980s, but what has been happening to senior Americans in the last decade and a half is shocking. AARP found that religious attendance dropped from 50% to 37% for those over 60, community group membership dropped from 32% to 25%, and volunteerism fell from 47% to 33%. That’s a dramatic change in just the past 15 years, and while one might think the pandemic is the catalyst, the trend predates it, and the past three years show no sign of improving.
What can be done about it? Social connections are like the weather—everyone talks about them, but no one does anything about them. Vivek Murphy spoke about the loneliness crisis back in 2023, but he left office before taking any concrete steps to address it. The new MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) report cites loneliness and lack of social connections as a cause of poor health among young people, but
only one of its more than 180 recommendations addresses social isolation.
Local governments have acknowledged the problem intermittently, but interest has rarely been sustained. New York City appointed Ruth Westheimer as its first ambassador for loneliness in 2023, but the position has remained vacant since her death in 2024.
Fragmented initiatives are not enough to tackle a problem that threatens the health and happiness of so many older Americans. It’s especially difficult because everything from how people live (too far apart) to how they work (older workers often lose their social circle when they’re pushed out of work) to how they use technology (too much) contributes to the loneliness epidemic.
Stern says there are lessons to be learned from other countries that view senior loneliness as a public health crisis rather than an individual problem. Both Britain and Japan have appointed ministers for loneliness, while Germany has set up a network of around 400 senior citizens’ offices to help older people find volunteer opportunities and social connections.
These societies, and other successful aging nations, are creating a public health infrastructure to support communication, a sense of purpose, and engagement well into the latter half of life.
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