{"id":5622,"date":"2024-05-06T09:02:10","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T09:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=5622"},"modified":"2024-05-06T09:31:28","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T09:31:28","slug":"the-ages-when-you-feel-most-lonely-and-how-to-reconnect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=5622","title":{"rendered":"The Ages When You Feel Most Lonely and How to Reconnect"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New research suggests people tend to be lonelier in young adulthood and late life. But experts say it doesn\u2019t have to be that way.<\/p>\n

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When Surgeon General Vivek Murthy went on a nationwide college tour last fall, he started to hear the same kind of question time and again: How are we supposed to connect with one another when nobody talks anymore?<\/p>\n

In an age when participation in community organizations<\/a>, clubs<\/a> and religious groups<\/a> has declined, and more social interaction is happening online instead of in person, some young people<\/a> are reporting levels of loneliness<\/a> that, in past decades, were typically associated with older adults.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of the many reasons loneliness has become a problem at both the beginning and end of our life span. In a study<\/a> published last Tuesday in the journal Psychological Science, researchers found that loneliness follows a U-shaped curve: Starting from young adulthood, self-reported loneliness tends to decline as people approach midlife only to rise again after the age of 60, becoming especially pronounced by around age 80.<\/p>\n

While anyone can experience loneliness, including middle-aged adults<\/a>, people in midlife may feel more socially connected than other age groups because they are often interacting with co-workers, a spouse, children and others in their community \u2014 and these relationships may feel stable and satisfying, said Eileen K. Graham, an associate professor of medical social sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the lead author of the study.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As people get older, those opportunities can \u201cstart to fall away,\u201d she said. In the study, which looked at data waves spanning several decades, starting as early as the 1980s and ending as late as 2018, participants at either end of the age spectrum were more likely to agree with statements such as: \u201cI miss having people around me\u201d or \u201cMy social relationships are superficial.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have social muscles just like we have physical muscles,\u201d Dr. Murthy said. \u201cAnd those social muscles weaken when we don\u2019t use them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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New research suggests people tend to be lonelier in young adulthood and late life. But experts say it doesn\u2019t have to be that way.When Surgeon General Vivek Murthy went on a nationwide college tour last fall, he started to hear the same kind of question time and again: How are we supposed to connect with one another when nobody talks anymore?In an age when participation in community organizations, clubs and religious groups has declined, and more social interaction is happening online instead of in person, some young people are reporting levels of loneliness that, in past decades, were typically associated with older adults.It\u2019s one of the many reasons loneliness has become a problem at both the beginning and end of our life span. In a study published last Tuesday in the journal Psychological Science, researchers found that loneliness follows a U-shaped curve: Starting from young adulthood, self-reported loneliness tends to decline as people approach midlife only to rise again after the age of 60, becoming especially pronounced by around age 80.While anyone can experience loneliness, including middle-aged adults, people in midlife may feel more socially connected than other age groups because they are often interacting with co-workers, a spouse, children and others in their community \u2014 and these relationships may feel stable and satisfying, said Eileen K. Graham, an associate professor of medical social sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the lead author of the study.As people get older, those opportunities can \u201cstart to fall away,\u201d she said. In the study, which looked at data waves spanning several decades, starting as early as the 1980s and ending as late as 2018, participants at either end of the age spectrum were more likely to agree with statements such as: \u201cI miss having people around me\u201d or \u201cMy social relationships are superficial.\u201d\u201cWe have social muscles just like we have physical muscles,\u201d Dr. Murthy said. \u201cAnd those social muscles weaken when we don\u2019t use them.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5624,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5625,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622\/revisions\/5625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}