Loneliness Epidemic in Our Time
Author: Sam Roussos | Sponsorship & Partnerships Officer
Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
Perhaps it was lonely?
The chicken or the egg? Proponents of this age-old debate have fought long and hard over the answer, and it’s a question that has plagued the minds of scientists and philosophers for over 3000 years. With well over one trillion produced each year, eggs are a staple in the morning routine of more than three million Australians, making up not just their breakfast, but their social media feeds too. As of today, an image of an egg still remains the most liked picture on Instagram with over 55 million likes, and it is this absurdity that underpins financial mogul Warren Buffet’s refusal to invest in the social media behemoth. He never invests in what he does not understand, and just like the chicken and the egg, the complex paradigm that is social media appears to leave him, and many others, bewildered with an unanswered paradoxical question; in a world more connected than ever, why do we feel so disconnected?
Loneliness Epidemic in Our Time
One year ago, at the start of the pandemic, we brought you a piece exploring the detrimental effects of physical distancing on loneliness, and unsurprisingly, loneliness rates skyrocketed as a result of Covid-19. Prior to the pandemic, 1 in 10 Australians reported felling prolonged periods of loneliness, whereas that number drastically rose to 1 in 4 at the height of lockdowns. As explored in that article, loneliness is incredibly detrimental to our health and broader society with a 2017 United Kingdom study estimating that loneliness costs the UK economy $4.5 billion per year in lost productivity (New Economics Foundation & The Co-Op 2017). But are our feelings of loneliness actually anything new? Well yes…and no.
It would not be outrageous to believe that the “Loneliness Epidemic in Our Time” is a headline from yesterday’s paper, but it is actually from a 1977 edition of the Chicago Tribune. Regardless of what you might think, there is actually insufficient data to support the hypothesis that we have become progressively lonelier over time. Given we have not recorded data for long enough, all the current analysis pertaining to loneliness is based on assertions. There are assumed causalities that because we are getting married later, living alone in higher numbers, and slowly losing our religious affiliations, we are subsequently lonelier (Ospina, 2019). This argument within itself starts to become a chicken and an egg scenario, but what we can say with reasonable certainty is that you are probably not lonelier than someone exactly your age 20 years ago. But in saying this, there is still a little bit more underneath the shell.
You’ve got a friend in me
We are discovering a pernicious trend; over the last 25 years the average number of close friends’ people have, has fallen from three to two, (Stanford, 2011). This is problematic because relationships speak to who we are as human beings. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar discovered that 150 is the ideal number of meaningful friendships a person should have, where 5 of these are people you see nearly every day, and trust with almost anything. He found that this sense of community was integral to our wellbeing, and as the data shows us, we are slowly getting further and further away from this target. So why are we seeing this decline in the quality of our friendships? Well there may be a couple of reasons: more than 60% of Americans say they have a lack of trust in others, only 75% of Americans say they would go out of their way to help another person (a drop of 10% over the last decade), and given the rise of social media, we are spending much less time in person with friends (Pew research, 2019).
But maybe this is a chicken and egg argument. Maybe it isn’t our lack of trust, empathy and physical interaction that has resulted in a decline in our friendships, but perhaps it is the other way around; perhaps we just stopped seeing the worth in upholding our friendships and this is what has helped cause the aforementioned points. Given current perceptions towards mental health, this might seem rather counter intuitive. For the last few decades we have been engaged in a fairly successful war against mental health stigmas, where we have seen a steady decrease in stigmas towards mental health, and an increase in people reaching out for help. Given this fact, it sounds strange to proport that we are caring less about mental health and friendships. However, in our attempts to destigmatise mental health, we may have indivertibly created a new one.
#SelfCareSunday
Mental health undoubtedly lies on a spectrum, but we are seeing a worrying trend where, while there is a diminishing stigma to seeking help, we are creating an individual bias of what actually deserves assistance. Rather than viewing mental health as a necessity no matter your mental state, we are discounting the need for healthy practices based on how severe we perceive our mental state to be. Take for example “R U OKAY” day; it is a fantastic initiative to start a dialogue amongst people, but the majority of individuals still believe it only applies to those who have severe mental health issues. As Surgeon General of the United States Vivek Murty suggests, “we should start treating our friendships like we do food and water”, but this can actually be extended to mental health more generally. Ask yourself: “do I actually know what healthy mental health habits look like?”. The answer is most likely “no”.
But what happens to those people who don’t identify as suffering from any severe mental health issues that warrant seeking professional support, but still want better wellbeing outcomes? Well we find that they are forced into buying monetised narratives of “self-care” due to insufficient education. The term “self-care Sunday” has quadrupled in google searches since 2018, but this has simply become an Instagramable and fetishised idea. The idea of self-care is more nuanced and multi-faceted than simply staring blankly at a wall, and without proper education, it can actually be harmful. People suffering from depression and anxiety reported worse mental health outcomes when partaking in the popularised forms of “self-care”, as it can often be isolating and alienating. What lies at the core of the issue is we lack a fundamental understanding of what healthy habits look like.
The Best Investment
We need to normalise treating mental health like we do any other part of general wellbeing, such as diet and exercise. Mental health in Australia is already incredibly underfunded with expenditure per capita being merely $420 per person, but if we want to really rectify systemic failings in our mental health system, we need to treat it like we do other problems. From funding for engrained support in school curriculums, to funding NGOs to fill market gaps, to even providing postal mental health check-ups as we do for other health issues such as prostate cancer, ultimately, we need a broader discussion of how we can incorporate positive mental health practices in our everyday lives.
Warren Buffet once famously said that the “best investment is in yourself”, but to offer some nuance to that, investing in yourself also means investing in your friends and healthy habits. So why not pick up the phone and invite that friend you haven’t seen for a while out for a coffee, and who knows, you might very well even have an egg or two.