The rise of loneliness in the UK: Opportunity and Capacity for Connection

Chronic loneliness rose by over half a million people to 7.1% between 2020-2023 in the United Kingdom (UK) (McClelland, 2023) with almost half of all adults reporting feeling lonely occasionally, sometimes, often or always (Campaign to End Loneliness, 2023).

Our social landscape has radically changed at a fast pace, reducing conditions for social connectedness despite our fundamental need to belong remaining unaltered, with us being genetically, neurologically, and hormonally designed for connection (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2009). However, it is argued that the decline in community and changes in household structure in the UK may not be a cause, but a symptom of loneliness. Subjective by definition, loneliness is also experienced in well-connected individuals (Franklin, 2009). It is the discrepancy between the need to belong and satisfaction with personal relationships that is associated with loneliness (Mellor et al., 2008). The quality of social bonds matter, yet, social bonds have become more unpredictable and less enduring with individuals often being more detached in relationships. Contributing factors may include consumerism shifting focus to desire, pleasure, and disposability, thus undermining social bonds; increased internet use and networking offering temporary connectedness rather than true bonds; and mobile phone use reducing presence in relationships (Franklin, 2009; Matthews et al., 2019).

Similarly, research regarding young adults’ experiences of loneliness finds that it is not necessarily the place or number of connections that matters, but the associated qualities that foster belongingness. Indeed, places that are considered the loneliest for some people are the most socially connected places for others. Qualities include:

• Relationships and sociability (feeling connected vs disconnected)
• Comfort (sense of peace vs being busy)
• Familiarity (sense of community and familiar faces vs unfamiliar environment)
• Activities and use (shared goal, interest, or activity vs boredom and nothing to do) (Moore et al., 2023).

Personal Capacity for Connection

What’s more, it can be argued that experiences of disconnection and loneliness may be contributing to a reduced ability for individuals to connect, with downward spirals of negative emotional, behavioural, and relational effects leading to further negative social interactions and self-fulfilling prophesies. Two pathways are explored below.

Firstly, experiencing loneliness has been found to trigger a self-preserving regulatory loop in that perceiving social isolation creates a sense of unsafety and vulnerability, which triggers hypervigilance for social threat and rejection. This leads to cognitive biases causing lonely individuals to expect, see, and remember more negative and threatening social interactions, which influences the individual’s behaviour in avoidant or hostile ways that elicit negative behaviours from others, thus confirming negative expectations and building a self-fulfilling prophecy (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009; Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2010).

Secondly, the social landscape generates an interpersonal pathway for experiencing traumatic stressors and risk of developmental trauma, such as attachment trauma (interrupting affective exchanges between parent and child resulting in insecure attachment styles) or interdependence trauma (lacking social, emotional, and material support and a sense of social embeddedness and belonging) (Kira, 2021, 2022).

Childhood maltreatment, and particularly emotional neglect and abuse, contributes to a feeling of not mattering, which is considered a robust predictor of loneliness and associated with social avoidance. Important for self-concept and social bonds, mattering is the perception that, somehow, one is a significant part of the world around them, deriving from a sense of being the object of others’ awareness and interest, and being relied upon (Elliott et al., 2004; Flett et al., 2016). Additionally, childhood adversities have been found to significantly predict self-disgust (Simpson et al., 2020), defined as “an aversive, self-conscious affective state that reflects disgust directed towards the self” (Overton et al., 2008). Self-disgust has been linked with loneliness and social inhibition, predisposing insecure and tense feelings in social interactions and reduced motivation to connect with others (Ypsilanti, 2018). Moreover, according to Polyvagal Theory, such neglect can impact neurophysiological development causing atypical maturation of the vagal circuit of the nervous system resulting in diminished ability for self-regulation and reciprocal social engagement behaviours. Connection depends on nervous system capacity to downregulate threat reactions to enable cooperative behaviours and co-regulation (Porges, 2022; Porges & Furman, 2011). Consequently, as ‘stress generation theory’ posits, trauma-induced physiological changes create maladaptive behaviours, cognitions and attitudes that then contribute to the creation of further dependent stressors (Kira, 2021).

Whilst there are many spatial, social, and emotional factors contributing to the rise in loneliness in the UK, and the toll this is taking on individuals’ health, wellbeing, and relationships, the neuropsychophysiological effects generated in the context of a disconnected Western culture that renders individuals limited in capacity to harness social connection or to perceive that social opportunities and relationships even exist for them should be considered in explaining increasing rates of loneliness in the UK (Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2010).

Importantly, Hawkley & Cacioppo (2010) highlight the need to address hypervigilance and cognitive bias that is characteristic of lonely individuals, asserting that interventions that do not would fail to significantly impact loneliness.

References

Cacioppo, J. T., & Hawkley, L. C. (2009). Perceived social isolation and cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(10), 447–454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2009.06.005

Cacioppo, J. T., & Patrick, W. (2009). Loneliness: Human nature and the need for social connection. W. W. Norton.

Campaign to End Loneliness. (2023). Facts and Statistics About Loneliness. Campaign to End Loneliness. https://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/facts-and-statistics/

Earley, P. C., & Gibson, C. B. (1998). Taking Stock in Our Progress on Individualism-Collectivism: 100 Years of Solidarity and Community. Journal of Management, 24(3), 265–304. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639802400302

Elliott, G., Kao, S., & Grant, A.-M. (2004). Mattering: Empirical Validation of a Social-Psychological Concept. Self and Identity, 3(4), 339–354. https://doi.org/10.1080/13576500444000119

Flett, G. L., Goldstein, A. L., Pechenkov, I. G., Nepon, T., & Wekerle, C. (2016). Antecedents, correlates, and consequences of feeling like you don’t matter: Associations with maltreatment, loneliness, social anxiety, and the five-factor model. Personality and Individual Differences, 92, 52–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.12.014

Franklin, A. S. (2009). On loneliness. Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, 91(4), 343–354. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0467.2009.00326.x

Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010). Loneliness Matters: A Theoretical and Empirical Review of Consequences and Mechanisms. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 40(2), 218–227. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-010-9210-8

Kira, I. A. (2021). Taxonomy of stressors and traumas: An update of the development-based trauma framework (DBTF): A life-course perspective on stress and trauma. Traumatology (Tallahassee, Fla.). https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000305

Kira, I. A. (2022). Taxonomy of stressors and traumas: An update of the development-based trauma framework (DBTF): A life-course perspective on stress and trauma. Traumatology (Tallahassee, Fla.), 28(1), 84–97. https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000305

Klinenberg, E. (2016). Social Isolation, Loneliness, and Living Alone: Identifying the Risks for Public Health. American Journal of Public Health (1971), 106(5), 786–787. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303166

Matthews, T., Danese, A., Caspi, A., Fisher, H. L., Goldman-Mellor, S., Kepa, A., Moffitt, T. E., Odgers, C. L., & Arseneault, L. (2019). Lonely young adults in modern Britain: Findings from an epidemiological cohort study. Psychological Medicine, 49(2), 268–277. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291718000788

McClelland, H. (2023). The State of Loneliness 2023: ONS data on loneliness in Britain June 2023. Campaign to End Loneliness; Policy Commons. https://policycommons.net/artifacts/4573197/untitled/

Mellor, D., Stokes, M., Firth, L., Hayashi, Y., & Cummins, R. (2008). Need for belonging, relationship satisfaction, loneliness, and life satisfaction. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(3), 213–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.03.020

Moore, G., Fardghassemi, S., & Joffe, H. (2023). Wellbeing in the city: Young adults’ sense of loneliness and social connection in deprived urban neighbourhoods. Wellbeing, Space and Society, 5, 100172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wss.2023.100172

Office for National Statistics (ONS). (2023, May 18). Families and households in the UK - Office for National Statistics. ONS Website. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2022

Overton, P. G., Markland, F. E., Taggart, H. S., Bagshaw, G. L., & Simpson, J. (2008). Self-Disgust Mediates the Relationship Between Dysfunctional Cognitions and Depressive Symptomatology. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 8(3), 379–385. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.8.3.379

Porges, S. W. (2022). Polyvagal Theory: A Science of Safety. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 16, 871227–871227. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2022.871227

Porges, S. W., & Furman, S. A. (2011). The early development of the autonomic nervous system provides a neural platform for social behaviour: A polyvagal perspective. Infant and Child Development, 20(1), 106–118. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.688

Simpson, J., Helliwell, B., Varese, F., & Powell, P. (2020). Self‐disgust mediates the relationship between childhood adversities and psychosis. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 59(2), 260–275. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjc.12245

Tang, L., & Koveos, P. E. (2008). A Framework to Update Hofstede’s Cultural Value Indices: Economic Dynamics and Institutional Stability. Journal of International Business Studies, 39(6), 1045–1063. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400399

Ypsilanti, A. (2018). Lonely but avoidant—The unfortunate juxtaposition of loneliness and self-disgust. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 4(1), 144–4. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0198-1