There are growing numbers of people living alone and also showing a tendency to increase is the amount of people who feel lonely or have nobody with whom they can relate. On the one hand, recent data reflect an objective situation: in Spain, a quarter of the population live in single-person households, precisely 25.4% according to the Continuous Survey on Households (INE, 2017). On the other, data from Eurostat (2017) and from Eurofound (2016) show the subjective perception of 2.2% of people who think that they have nobody to talk to, while 3.1% consider that they have nobody to ask for help and 6% openly declare themselves as feeling lonely.

Loneliness, therefore, is a perception and must not be confused with living alone and without a network of relations; the latter situation is called social isolation. On occasions, isolation is the consequence of objective causes such as not having contact with other people: someone can live in company yet feel alone, or to the contrary, live alone yet not feel lonely. Social isolation refers to a lack of contact or of social network size, which can be quantified objectively (for example, people who live alone), whereas loneliness is defined subjectively as a painful experience lived in the absence of social relations, of  a sensation that one belongs, or with feelings of isolation (Yanguas et al., 2018). 

In fact, the incidence of loneliness and social isolation is more widespread that we might think. To delimit the reach of these phenomena, a survey was carried out in eight Spanish municipalities with a representative sample of 1,688 people. The sample was made up of an equal number of women and men, distributed across four age groups (20-39 years, 40-64 years, 65-79 years; 80 years and over), equally represented. The education level, civil status and living arrangements of those surveyed were not uniform.

According to the survey, some 43.6% of the respondents are at risk of social isolation or feeling alone; some 11.8% are in both situations at the same time and only 44.6% do not declare any type of risk of social isolation or feeling of loneliness (figure 1). In other words, over half of the population surveyed feels some kind of loneliness or faces some risk of being socially isolated.
 

Studying loneliness and isolation is undoubtedly important from the emotional and psychological viewpoint, but also from the perspective of health and public policies. Loneliness is associated with worse levels of health, and several research projects have confirmed that people who are socially integrated have a much lower mortality risk (Umberson and Montez, 2010; Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015). Their relevance, therefore, is evident from various viewpoints, but the diverse dimensions that the phenomenon encompasses means that its measurement is not so simple. Loneliness can be of a social type (over 13% feel abandoned or miss the company of others) or an emotional type (over 23% do not have sufficient people to call on in case of need or whom they can fully trust).
 

Moreover, the risk of social isolation may be due to the lack of a family network which is suffered by around 10% of the survey respondents; or alternatively to the lack of a friendship network, which comes to affect nearly 30%. Figure 2 reflects the incidence of each of these dimensions considered separately.

Although loneliness affects all kinds of people, its social dimension increases with age; in general, it is suffered more by men and by people with little or no formal education (figure 3). Over the course of their lives, between 27 and 36% of men (between 26 and 34% of women) feel abandoned or miss the company of others (social isolation) and there are even more, between 32 and 53% of men and 26 and 44% of women, who do not have sufficient people to call on in case of need or whom they can fully trust (emotional isolation). 

In all cases the emotional dimension of loneliness is more intense than the social dimension, and it reaches over 52% among people with little or no formal education. 
 

It is important to point out, however, that at intermediate ages (40 to 64 years) loneliness, especially emotional loneliness, is perceived to a larger extent by women.

The risk of social isolation, whether from the friendship network or the family network, is generally greater among men, among people with a lower education level, and increases with age (figure 4). 

Although it is true that old age is the phase in the life cycle in which loneliness and isolation have the greatest influence, it is important to underline that both phenomena are also present at intermediate ages of the life cycle. Around 30% of people aged from 40 to 65 years experience social isolation and over 35% suffer from emotional loneliness. Taking into account that this is the stage in the life cycle that we are most occupied and playing social roles that connect us to other people (parenthood, work, etc.), a pessimistic scenario opens up regarding the evolution of levels of loneliness of these people when they grow older.
 

Loneliness and social isolation can exist at all stages of the life cycle, but with age the social network is reduced, while the feeling of loneliness and isolation increases. For this reason, elderly people are the most vulnerable group and the one that needs the most interventions so that they can have frequent and, above all, higher-quality social contacts.

DE JONG-GIERVELD, J., and F. KAMPHULS (1985): «The development of a Rasch-type loneliness scale», Applied Psychological Measurement, 9(3).

Eurofound (2016)

Eurostat (2017)

HOLT-LUNSTAD, J., T.B. SMITH and J.B. LAYTON (2015): «Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review», Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2).

LUBBEN, J., E. BLOZIK, G. GILLMANN, S. ILIFFE, W. VON RENTELN KRUSE, J.C. BECK and A.E. STUCK (2006): «Performance of an abbreviated version of the Lubben Social Network Scale among three European community-dwelling older adult populations», The Gerontologist, 46(4).

UMBERSON, D., and J.K. MONTEZ (2010): «Social relationships and health: a flashpoint for health policy», Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 51(S).

YANGUAS LEZAUN, J., A. CILVETI SARASOLA, S. HERNÁNDEZ CHAMORRO, S. PINAZO-HERNANDIS, S.  ROIG i CANALS and C. SEGURA TALAVERA (2018): «El reto de la soledad en la vejez», Zerbitzuan: Gizarte Zerbitzuetarako Aldizkaria / Revista de Servicios Sociales, 66.