A writer friend recently asked if I ever felt lonely. She confessed to being puzzled by the idea: her problem was an excess of people, with their endless demands and stupidities, not a lack. What her soul required was not more company but a good book and a cup of tea. I could relate to that.
Misanthropic scribblers aside, why exactly are so many people lonely to the point that an epidemic has been declared and a dedicated British ministry set up? A popular answer is that we suffer from a loss of “social connection,” a once-rare expression that’s now everywhere.
But what does it mean to be socially connected? Is it a matter of circles or webs: inclusion in groups or a dense social network? Is loneliness simply social isolation, its cure more communities, more contacts and more interactions?
Perhaps what matters is the quality or form of our connections rather than their quantity — a few strong bonds more than many weak ties. An entirely online social life might offer a large social network and membership of many virtual communities, but netizens could still feel disconnected in the digital crowd.
Or maybe social connection exists inside our heads rather than in our social ecologies. Even if people appear to be tightly bound by interpersonal threads, they might feel lonely if they believe they’re unloved, invisible or don’t matter to anyone. The essence of loneliness might be having needs for warmth, recognition or meaning that are unmet in a person’s existing relationships. Loneliness is so challenging to understand because it combines the subjective and the objective, the structural and the personal.
In her new book So Lonely, the Norwegian writer Hilde Østby cites a popular definition of loneliness from two leading researchers: “Loneliness is not getting the social contact we desire.” That can’t be correct: it could work equally well as a definition of boredom or relationship dissatisfaction. And if we desire less contact or different forms of contact we might feel overwhelmed, angry or disappointed rather than lonely if we don’t get them. But at least this definition captures how loneliness is a discrepancy between a personal wish and a social reality.
Østby conducts a thorough exploration of that gap, acknowledging the complexity and elusiveness of her central idea. She distinguishes ordinary loneliness from the existential, cosmic insignificance kind, and points out some of its apparent paradoxes. City-dwelling people are lonelier despite being surrounded by other humans, and although social trust reduces loneliness the highly cohesive Japanese suffer high rates of it. Loneliness involves a deep and abiding sense of disconnection from others, but brief and shallow interactions with baristas have been shown to reduce it.
So Lonely jumps nimbly from the psychology of loneliness to its societal dimensions. On the psychological side Østby examines its links to grief and shame, showing how responses to being socially isolated often compound the problem by prompting further social rejection. She reviews a range of literatures on social exclusion, attachment theory, oxytocin and the neuroscience of social pain, among others, as well as the striking evidence that loneliness has dire effects on physical health.
At times she gets the science a little wrong. Behavioural experiments on ostracism attributed to “devious neurologists” were in fact carried out by psychologists (and we prefer to be called “inventive”). Twin studies haven’t “shown that approximately 50 per cent of our traits and characteristics are those we are born with,” but that variation in all of our traits and characteristics, loneliness included, has some genetic contribution. Her claim that loneliness is the opposite of depression is hard to square with the strong association between the two, and statements about the intergenerational transmission of attachment styles are exaggerated. Nevertheless, Østby’s use of research evidence to season her personal narrative is generally compelling.
In her more sociological mode, Østby draws connections to evidence of declining social participation, famously analysed in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Inevitably she discusses smartphones and the pandemic, described as a “colossal loneliness experiment.” But the main drivers of loneliness she proposes are forms of social division. “Instead of being surprised by how many lonely people there are, we should view them as symptoms of a society where exclusion and violence is accepted.”
Indeed, Østby’s analysis foregrounds the social justice dimensions of loneliness to an unusual degree. On her account social exclusion is deliberately or at least knowingly caused rather than simply something that happens as a result of nameless social forces. Whereas some have argued that loneliness has increased due to gradual urbanisation and rising individualism, Østby points to racism, sexism and the rejection of immigrants, the disabled, sexual minorities and other marginalised groups. She coins the verb “to lonelify” to capture these processes. Loneliness is fostered by the creation of outsiders, an intentional rending of the social fabric rather than a gradual loosening of its strands.
So Lonely’s very embodied understanding of loneliness and its causes is also distinctive. Rather than presenting the condition as a private soul-ache and its treatment as abstract connection, Østby examines how physical touch, eye contact and laughter erode it. Overcoming loneliness involves becoming less an isolated consciousness and more a visible and physically engaged body. Even so, each of these embodiments of social connection has its problems. Touch can be aggressive, online life reduces eye contact and laughter can be mocking. Østby has a lot to say about how humour is deployed by bullies and ideologues, as in the derogatory memes circulating on right-wing social media.
As her politically inflected account of loneliness implies, Østby’s proposed response to the epidemic is progressive and humanistic. The world needs less violence, prejudice and social hierarchy, and more inclusion and understanding. “We can all be warm wool blankets in each other’s lives,” she writes, remembering that “We are never alone. Our flock is humanity.” The message is uplifting, its urgency underscored by the expansive range of social ills Østby attributes to loneliness. “Loneliness disguises itself as envy and jealousy; it hides in pointless consumption and overeating, in shame and bullying and sarcasm, in the pursuit of status, in violence and status and racism, in never-ending clicks on social media.”
Even so, it is doubtful that loneliness is primarily driven by the processes of marginalisation that Østby emphasises. Loneliness is common among members of majority groups and related at least as strongly to age and personality as to the main dimensions of group-based social exclusion. Rates of loneliness have risen over a period when many forms of marginalisation and bias have declined. Østby is right to draw attention to these influences on loneliness but neglects the extent to which social ties have undergone a generalised loosening.
Østby’s uplift also carries with it an implied pessimism. If Norway, a country that consistently excels on indices of wealth, equality, human development, happiness, social coherence and freedom from violent crime remains a fertile breeding-ground for loneliness, what hope is there for the rest of us? Rising loneliness among young people in the Scandinavian countries might make us question whether progressive politics has all the answers, although their relatively low average rates in global comparisons suggests it may have some of them.
Two motifs repeat throughout So Lonely. One is the desolate figure of The Groke from Tove Jansson’s Moomin books for children. A personification of loneliness, she lives apart from the other characters, inspiring fear and freezing everything she touches. The other is the 2011 attacks by a far-right extremist that took seventy-seven young lives in Oslo and on Utøya Island. This combination of whimsy and terror can be jarring but it is unified by a fierce maternal ethic of care, a passion for protecting the vulnerable. Østby’s book offers a uniquely personal and Nordic view of loneliness that deserves to be widely read. •
So Lonely: Our Desire for Community and What Drives Us Apart
By Hilde Østby | Greystone Books | $34.99 | 288 pages
