Predicting Loneliness from Where and What People Do

Abstract

The many devastating mental health outcomes associated with chronic loneliness is the motivation behind research into examining personal and demographic characteristics of the lonely. The present study sought to examine the connection of where people live (degree of urbanization) and what people do (leisure activities) with self-report of loneliness in a large sample (N = 8356) of unrelated Dutch adults. Information regarding where people live and what they do in their leisure time was entered into a regression analysis for self-reported loneliness. The overall regression was significant and accounted for 2.8% of the loneliness scale scores. Significant independent predictors for loneliness were living in heavily urbanized areas and engaging in fewer social activities. People who went sightseeing or to amusement parks/zoos or who participated in clubs reported being less lonely. Spending time using a computer predicted higher self-report loneliness scores. Consistent with previous research, after controlling for other variables, gender was not a significant predictor of loneliness but both a younger age and a curvilinear or U-shaped curve of age predicted loneliness (the younger and the much older). The results suggest that meaningful interpersonal interactions may result in lower feelings of loneliness.

'The threat is in all of us': Perceptions of loneliness and divided communities in urban and rural areas during COVID‐19

“…While online communication was seen as an effective medium for maintaining social interaction for some, many participants believed online forms of communication would be more isolating in the long‐term. These findings support Nowland et al ( 2018 , p. 71) contention that digital communication and social media technologies are most effective in reducing loneliness when enhancing existing relationships or forging new connections (i.e. the stimulation hypothesis) but are counterproductive when used as a substitute for real‐life physical interaction (the displacement hypothesis).…”

“…A rise in digital connectivity is being matched by a general social decline in physical face‐to‐face connections (Patulny, 2020 ) and this brings potential to induce feelings of emotional loneliness (Patulny, 2020 ). However, there are also noted positive effects of online communication when it ‘stimulates’ rather than ‘displaces’ offline contact (Nowland et al, 2018 ). This is particularly important in remote rural areas, found in many parts of Australia.…”

Loneliness Is Associated with Depressive Affect, But Not with Most Other Symptoms of Depression in Community-Dwelling Individuals: A Network Analysis

“…An umbrella review of observational studies showed an association between loneliness and age (in a U-shaped way), female sex, low socioeconomic status and chronic medical conditions [ 6 ]. Recent research has confirmed the U-shaped or curvilinear association of loneliness with age, in that younger and much older individuals experience the most loneliness [ 7 ].…”

Is Loneliness in Emerging Adults Increasing Over Time? A Preregistered Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review

“…Moreover, loneliness is related to characteristics at the regional level, such as the degree of urbanization (MacDonald et al, 2020;Yan et al, 2014), population change (Buecker, Ebert, et al, 2020), and social inequality (Yan et al, 2014), which have changed worldwide over historical time, but at different rates depending on the country. All these historical changes may contribute to a better understanding of changes in emerging adults' loneliness over historical time.…”

“…The database is freely available and especially suited for our purposes as it contains nearly complete data on the environmental conditions of interest over the historical period examined in this meta-analysis. We used the regional-level population growth, degree of urbanization, and income inequality as spatiotemporal moderators in our analysis because these variables have been found to explain variance in loneliness in previous research (Buecker, Ebert, et al, 2020;MacDonald et al, 2020;Yan et al, 2014). Population growth was measured in annual percent, the degree of urbanization per nation was operationalized by the percent of the urban population of the total population, and the income inequality was indexed by the Gini coefficient.…”