decreases rates of affective disorders such as anxiety and depression, and even lowers mortality rates.
There are probably many reasons for these findings. Young people always have different perspectives from their elders. That means regular exposure to virtually anyone of a different generation increases the diversity of opinions you’re likely to experience. The music to which you listen may change. You may read different kinds of books, learn to laugh at different things. If you regularly inhabit another’s point of view, you are exercising very important regions of the brain. The quote “Sometimes you need to talk to a three-year-old so you can understand life again” is quite literally true. Plus, if the only friends you have are old, you will be attending many more funerals than weddings. And there’s nothing like watching the death of people around you to increase your sense of isolation. Having younger friends opens up a healthy can of life-goes-on, with a sparkling supply of weddings and baby showers in case you forget. Statistically, you’ve got a guarantee your young friends will outlive you.
Happily, the benefits of intergenerational friendship flow back into the life of the child. Regular interactions with older people increase a child’s problem-solving skills, positively influence emotional development, and improve language acquisition. Older people tend to be more patient, tend to look on the sunny side of life, and are more experienced with kids, often having raised children of their own. This ability to be kind, to listen, to empathize, is especially valuable for kids being raised in the chaos of a two-career family. Kids may always be the demander-in-chief, yet seniors who can make time for them and all their youthful foibles will discover the joys of being a wiser parent this time around.
So become someone’s favorite grandparent, as well as a mentor, friend, and confidant. Create peace in your marriage. Make friends with your neighbors. See your friends often.
And if you don’t?
All the lonely people
Researchers have uncovered three important facts about old age and loneliness. The first is as welcome as wrinkles: loneliness really increases with age. Depending on the study, the proportion of older adults experiencing at least moderate amounts of loneliness is anywhere between 20 percent and 40 percent. Second, loneliness throughout a person’s lifetime is uneven, following a U-shaped curve. Third, loneliness is the single greatest risk factor for clinical depression.
The definition of loneliness seems as obvious as drywall. You want to be around people and you can’t, so you feel bad. Defining loneliness in a scientifically specific way, though, is a bit tricky. Some people are “loners” and prefer life that way. Some folks favor pets over people. Others need humans around all the time. Researchers use the term “objective social isolation” for those who are isolated (and may even prefer it) and “perceived social isolation” for those who feel alone (and definitely do not prefer it). Here’s a laboratory definition for you: “A perceived lack of control over the quantity and especially the quality of one’s social activity.”
Scientists also have a psychometric test to measure what that quote means. Developed in one of the least lonely places on earth, Southern California, the test is appropriately called the UCLA Loneliness Scale. Here’s what researchers have found.
We start feeling lonely in late adolescence, and the feeling decreases as we move through early-to-middle adulthood. That’s natural: we go through school, jobs, kids—experiences chock-full of other people. Our number of friends rises sharply to peak at age twenty-five, then slowly drifts down to age forty-five, levels a bit, and continues its decline after fifty-five, completing the U shape of loneliness.
There are many caveats and nuances to these data, so the U curve’s a bit wobbly. Seventy-five-year-olds experience some of the least feelings of loneliness in life, followed by the most a month or two after their eightieth birthday. Seniors who don’t make much money experience severe loneliness more sharply than seniors who do: a monstrous threefold increase. Married people experience less loneliness than those living alone. This is true for all age groups, but the quality of intimacy plays a larger role for the marital well-being of seniors than of younger people. Physical health plays a powerful role in how much isolation the elderly suffer, too.
Where social isolation leads
The more socially isolated you become, the less happy you are. Researchers believe the reasons for this are deeply rooted in evolution: humans were too weak, biologically speaking, to survive without each other for long. Our brains created a system of negative responses to social isolation, compelling us to seek each other out. Cooperation and the mentalizing tools we developed for it put us squarely into the Darwinian carpool lane. We then survived long enough to pass along our genes.
We don’t do very well when we get lonely. For one, our social behaviors begin eroding. Loneliness is associated with poorer grooming habits, for example, and an increasing inability to navigate intimate life functions such as bathing, using the toilet, eating, dressing independently, and getting out of bed. Some of this may be related to the oncoming squalls of depression, gusts to which lonely seniors are particularly vulnerable.
Lonely seniors have poorer immune function. They can’t fight off viral infections or cancers as easily. They have higher levels of stress hormones, which bring on all kinds of negative effects. Chief among these are higher blood pressure, which increases the risk for heart disease and stroke. Loneliness hurts overall cognition too, from memory to perceptual speed. It’s even a risk factor for dementia.
Chronic loneliness can throw you into a nasty loop. As you probably know, the process of aging involves physical pain: certain tissues begin to break down for which there will be no cure; aches intensify in specific body parts naturally vulnerable to aging (arthritis is but one example). Such discomfort can affect your topics of conversation, your mobility, and your sleep. All combine to make you increasingly unpleasant to be around. The more unpleasant you are, the less people want to hang with you. Fewer social interactions make you more susceptible to the problems we’ve been discussing. You become even more unable to interact socially, and people quit visiting. This cycle repeats itself over and over again: the lonelier you are, the lonelier you become. And that’s when the attack dog of depression strikes. By the time people are in their eighties, loneliness is the single greatest risk factor for clinical depression. That’s a steaming bag of bad neural news, as we’ll discuss in a later chapter.
The most dramatic effect of social isolation on the elderly is death. The probability of death is 45 percent greater for lonely seniors than it is for socially active ones. That number holds steady even when you control for things like debilitating physical ailments and depression. If you don’t have a lot of friends, you die sooner than you have to.
Inflammation of the brain
“Tell us, Mrs. Holderness, what do you think is the best thing about being 103?” a journalist asked. Molly’s response was quick and good-humored: “No peer pressure.”
She is fortunate to have a sharp mind. Many elderly people don’t—and most of those are women. Neuroscientist Laura Fratiglioni wondered if there could be a connection between the fact that men die before women, leaving widows alone in life, and the fact that women suffer more dementia than men, especially after the age of eighty. Could isolation be the culprit? Fratiglioni determined there was indeed a correlation. Women who live alone, as well as those without strong social interactivity, are at much greater risk for dementia than those who live with someone or have sustained, close social interactions.
The brain mechanisms behind this disturbing finding were soon under active investigation. A clear, more causal picture has emerged: excessive loneliness causes brain damage.
This deserves a fuller explanation because
