Graduate Spotlight

Loneliness: The New Epidemic

BLAKE FRASER

During my M.S. in Psychology: Developmental Psychology program at Liberty, I focused my thesis on a very relevant topic in postmodernity — loneliness. Loneliness, also known as perceived social isolation, refers to a person’s subjective account of their social connectedness with others (Cacioppo et al., 2011). Loneliness is extremely hard to define. For the purposes of this essay, it will be defined as a negative emotional experience that results from perceived deficiencies in one’s social relationships. Loneliness is a widespread issue, with prevalence rates spanning from 10% to 50% (Beutel et al., 2017; Nyqvist et al., 2017; Mullen et al., 2019). Research suggests adolescents/young adults and older adults display the highest levels (Lasgaard et al., 2016; Victor & Yang, 2012). While loneliness is far reaching, it is also problematic because of the potential health threats it poses. Specifically, loneliness is related to adverse physical, mental, and social consequences (Park et al., 2020), including strong and temporal relationships with depression, social anxiety, and suicidal ideation (Hutten et al., 2021; Lim et al., 2016; Schinka et al., 2012). Loneliness is now being recognized as a pervasive public health threat and epidemic (American Psychological Association, 2017). To better understand a person’s individual experience with loneliness, my research team and I engaged in non-formal qualitative interviews and surveyed literature to discover the leading causal or contributing variables to loneliness among college students. We established 18 contributing variables of loneliness which fit into three categories: 1. Circumstantial variables (e.g., geographic location, conflicting priorities, etc.) 2. Interpersonal variables (e.g., bullying, social media, etc.) 3. Intrapersonal variables (e.g., social anxiety, fear of rejection, etc.) Once these contributing variables were established, my team and I used the existing UCLA Loneliness Scale and a Student Social Capital Instrument (SSCI) my team and I developed to investigate college students’ levels of loneliness. We also utilized top contributing variables of loneliness with an explicit cognitive processing tool (SSCI) and an implicit cognitive processing tool (concept mapping activity). Overall, around 20% of the sample reported moderate levels of loneliness, and around 5% reported high levels of loneliness. For the concept mapping rankings, people with higher levels of loneliness ranked social anxiety much higher than people with lower levels of loneliness, while people with lower levels of loneliness ranked geographic location much higher than people with higher levels of loneliness. Across all levels, bullying/mistreatment was ranked highly. The varying results suggest that people’s individual experiences or perceptions of what drives loneliness vary greatly. While there is still work to be done, this exploratory study provided a great framework for creating personalized interventions aimed at reducing loneliness in college students. Future studies will provide insight into how college students are defining the contributing variables of loneliness and investigate a novel approach for designing and implementing personalized loneliness interventions. Above all else, remember that loneliness is a highly individualized experience, and someone around you may be experiencing loneliness, even while being surrounded by others, and understanding what is uniquely contributing to someone’s experience of loneliness is paramount in reducing it.