There are more than 300 millions of us in the United States.
and sometimes it seems like we’re all friends on Face book. But the sad truth is
that Americans are lonelier than ever. Between 1985 and 2004, the number of
people who said there was no one with whom they discussed important matters
tripled, to 25 percent, according to Duke University researchers. Unfortunately,
as a new study linking women to increased risk of heart disease shows, all this
loneliness can be detrimental to our health. The bad news
doesn’t just affect women. Social isolation in all adults has been linked to a
series of physical and mental ailments, including sleep disorders, high blood
pressure, and an increased risk of depression and suicide. How lonely you feel
today actually predicts how well you’ll sleep tonight and how depressed you’ll
feel a year from now, says John T. Cacioppo, a neuroscientist at the University
of Chicago and coauthor of Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need .for Social
Connection. Studies have shown that loneliness can cause stress levels to rise
and can weaken the immune system. Lonely people also tend to have less healthy
lifestyles, drinking more alcohol, eating more fattening food, and exercising
less than those who are not lonely. Though more Americans than
ever are living alone (25 percent of U.S. households, up from 7 percent in
1940), the connection between single-living and loneliness is in fact quite
weak. "Some of the most profound loneliness can happen when other people are
present," says Harry Reis, professor of psychology at the University of
Rochester. Take college freshmen: even though they’re surrounded by people
almost all the time, many feel incredibly isolated during the first quarter of
the school year with their friends and family members far away, Cacioppo says.
Studies have shown that how lonely freshmen will feel can be predicted by how
many miles they are from home. By the second quarter, however, most freshmen
have found social replacements for their high-school friends.
Unfortunately, as we age, it becomes more difficult to recreate those
social relationships. And that can be a big problem as America becomes a more
transient society, with and increasing number of Americans who say that they’re
willing to move away from home for a job. Loneliness can be
relative: it has been defined as an aversive (反感的) emotional response to a
perceived discrepancy between a person’s desired levels of social interaction
and the contact they’re actually receiving. People tend to measure themselves
against others, feeling particularly alone in communities where social
connection is the norm. That’s why collectivist cultures, like those in Southern
Europe, have higher levels of loneliness than individualist cultures, Cacioppo
says. For the same reason, isolated individuals feel most acutely alone on
holidays like Christmas Eve or Thanksgiving, when most people are surrounded by
family and friends. Lonely people can easily become lonelier because they tend to ______.