It peaks in young adulthood and older age in what’s called the ‘loneliness curve’. Here’s how to deal with feeling lonely in each life stage. Loneliness can hit you if you’re a young adult trying to navigate starting employment or education, and it can hit you when you’re older too, when your relationship status changes or you’re dealing with health issues.
This U-shaped pattern, peaking in younger and older adulthood is now being referred to as the “loneliness curve” thanks to a new study by Northwestern University. The study showed that loneliness consistently increased in older adults too. “Loneliness often occurs when we’re in transition and we lose our connection to our anchor points so the U-shaped curve makes sense,” says Prof Olivia Sagan, a chartered psychologist who researches loneliness.
“In young adulthood, many of your anchor points – family , school, friendships – are stripped away and then later in life where we’re no longer working, and we have a lesser role amidst our families, it’s perfectly logical to say that that loneliness may also kick in then too,” she explains. Loneliness is affecting us more than ever before. It’s been called everything from an “epidemic” to “the leprosy of the 21st century” with the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring loneliness to be a global health threat.
One US surgeon general claimed that its mortality effects are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day while recent research.
