Human beings are social creatures, but there are times where loneliness is real,
even whether even when people are all around you. Jimmy has the story Jimmy,
what does it mean to be lonely? Members of different age groups might
have different definitions or different ways of measuring exactly what loneliness is and how it
affects each of them. In reading the title of this article, my mind
immediately went social media. By the way, the article is titled nineteen percent
of US adults report frequently or always feeling lonely. But yeah, my mind
went straight to social media, and it was not surprising that this topic appeared
as the most likely cause for young people to feel lonely, while elderly report
little loneliness at all. So why the huge differentiation. We'll discuss the breakdown
of loneliness in the United States and what we can do to alleviate it.
This story is from Yahoo Life by Caitlin Riley on May twenty twenty four.
So the article actually begins by noting that lonely holiness is considered an epidemic in
America and according to the US surge in general. Despite this, the poll
reveals that fifty percent of the respondents rarely or never feel lonely, which is
a start contract that suggests a nuanced understanding is needed. And loneliness is not
just about objective social isolation, but also about subjective feeling or connection and fulfillment.
So, Jimmy, since you introduce us to the story, how do
the top three factors contributing to feelings of loneliness actually show up among the survey
respondents? Well, I think that the difference in the definition of loneliness just
goes to show to your point that loneliness is in fact a social understanding and
not necessarily the definition that is understood by everybody. People can experience their so
you know, their social connection differently, I think for the elderly versus the
the youth to have such differing opinions, and then breaking that down to women,
for example, who experience loneliness a lot differently than men and more frequently,
just goes to show that we define loneliness a lot differently. And so
for the young people who might socialize in different ways than the elderly but still
define loneliness by its textbook definition, I think they may be answering a question
that they're not really being asked, you know, and so that was kind
of my initial take on that. And you know, to relate this to
religion, you know, we are the ACA after all. I thought that
I thought that the decline in people saying they're religious versus the rise in people
saying that they're lonely, speaks to the fact that many people often turn to
religion for social purposes, and with people turning away from religion might be socializing
less. That was kind of a connection I thought is worthy of more exploration.
So I wanted to kind of posit that there. But as far as
the factors breaking these differences down, different understandings of what it means to be
lonely, you know, just seem to exist between different groups. You know,
I want to explore that whole thing that you brought it. You know,
I was thinking about talking about it a little bit later, you know,
when it comes to the decline of the you know, religious being a
thing and having a rise in the nons We covered that a lot here on
the nonprofits and how that could be a big contributing factor to how people socialize.
So, Cindy, I'm coming to you. How do you think the
decline of you know, being like people saying that they're religious or attending like
religious institution, temple, churches, et cetera, actually can be a contributing
factor to the possibility or the feeling of one being lonely. I think there
is an impact. I mean, I've been involved with the ACA for several
years now, and I've seen and heard this topic since the very beginning.
So we've talked a lot, a lot a lot at the ACA about this,
about the community aspect of religion and how atheists or non religious people can
combat this and offer an alternative, and we haven't found a real solution yet.
What this fall struck me with is that I was under the impression that
numbers were higher than what is shown here, and I wondered if maybe the
pandemic had an impact on that, meaning that loneliness is like basically, it's
like pain. It's something that you feel and when you're asked about question can
be influenced on how you feel at the moment, how you what you went
through in the last hours, days, months, And so the fact that
we've all been very much alone for almost a year, did it lower our
threshold to feel loneliness? That's what I wondered when I read this study.
Well, let's go back to the study and really talk about like the demographic
differences. So the poll shows that significant differences and loneliness are based on age
and gender. I believe, Jimmy, you brought up that point. Younger
people, particularly those who happen to be gen Z and millennials, report higher
rates of loneliness, which could be linked to an increased social media usage and
the pressure to maintain those online personalness. And this is reliance on virtual interactions
may hinder deeper and more meaningful face to face connections. But you know,
those who happen to be older who have not been I'm not going to say
exposed, but they're not as reliant on building relationships with social media as much
as like gen Zers and millennials are. Don't necessarily need that to be a
divining rod per se, you know, for lack of better term, when
it comes to defining like what their state of loneliness might be. So,
Jimmy, I want you to kind of, like, you know, give
your thoughts on how do you think that social media can play impact on how
one might look at or even experience loneliness versus not and then Cindy, I
would like for you to get your thoughts as well. Well. When it
comes to social media, you know, it can be a very anxiety inducing
type of medium for somebody who sees photos and sees events taking place where people
of their own age group, people of similar lifestyles perhaps likes and dislikes,
etc. Are out having fun there with people. They're making something of themselves,
if you will. But we have to remember that a lot of these
lives, these personas that we see online are glimpses. They're the highlights.
They are made up. The entire story is made up. Might be based
on real events, but that's not the consistency of that person's story, right.
It's not easy to remember that though, especially as a young person.
I think that when you see these things, you measure yourself against that.
And for the young people who are seeing other young people do this on social
media, that might translate to loneliness. But I think older people, people
from previous generation is that we're not en meshed in social media, can relate
to that in some way. They came up with billboards and television right of
people who maybe looked like them will reflected them in some way, but we're
doing better than them keeping up with the Joneses. Right Did I say that
already? I'm not sure if I did, But in any case, uh,
it's a very real thing. So uh, I just think that it
didn't quite equate to loneliness for those people, right who. Social media,
on the other hand, is different in that aspect. Now it includes socialization,
not just who's doing what, who's who's better off, who's well off?
You know, who's keeping up with the Joneses if you will. Now
it's who's keeping up with every Tom, Dick and Harry in the neighborhood.
You know, it's a little bit different, and I think it translates differently
between young people and old older folks. Do you do you think the keeping
up the Joneses issue, for you know, online personas is a thing,
Cindy, like when you actually look at the when you actually, you know,
think of how younger people are relating to one another versus maybe older people.
I'm not sure that social media has such an importance on the difference between
loneliness in young and older people. There are several factors that I'm not sure
are taken into account, Like all the people they met more people during their
lifetime, so they are they have more people to relate to when when needed.
And also those people they met, they are in their memories in the
way they think, and so loneliness is harder to trigger when you've met a
lot of people during your lifetime. That's that's one thing. Another thing is
that all the people grew up without social media, and so they had to
socialize is differently, and so those social connections they are probably more impactful in
the way they measure their own earliness. So I don't know's it's probably the
case that some people who are only turned more towards social media, but I'm
not entirely sure that social media is the cause of the problem. Yeah,
it just probably is just like what a symptoms position versus correlation. Yeah yeah,
thank you, turtles all the way down. Regardless. You know,
it's kind of interesting. I'm gonna go into a little anecdotal evidence when it
comes to how I viewed this pole. With my line of work, I
happen to deal with a lot of people who happened you know that are seniors,
and when I do my assessments to see, like, you know,
what kind of resources they may need A question that I always ask everybody is
are they lonely? And majority of the time the seniors say no, and
or they find other ways in order for them to engage with community around them.
And I will tell you, especially you know with my Latine and my
African American demographics, that the majority of them are a Christian, The majority
of them are attached to some type of you know, church, religious setting.
A lot of them have community members that they speak with on a regular
basis, and that is something that they use, I guess, to mitigate
any type of loneliness that they may possibly experience. So is it that maybe
us who happened to be irreligious secular not necessarily engaging in institutions like that causing
I don't know if we can say correlation versus causation an issue because our communities
may not be as you know, connected, resourceful or what have you.
Jimmy, what are your thoughts about that? And then CYNDII life for you
to chime in as well. Well, that's a good question, and it's
kind of a tough one as to ask because I don't feel like I'm lonely
and I don't go to church of course, and you know, I felt
like when I was in church, I didn't fit in and none of that,
none of that comfort, none of that socialization, really made me want
to be there. I think in that aspect, it might just come down
to feeling wanted, feeling connected. So there's probably a lot of people who
go to church that equate socialization in that space with not being lonely, but
they may still very well be lonely. You know, I found you guys,
I found the ACA. You know. I get asked sometimes in my
line of work, do you have a support network? Well, yeah,
I think I do. I think that Cynthia, I think either one of
you, Cindy, Cynthia, I could probably call you or contact you if
I needed to talk or if I needed something, and that right there.
I don't have to see you every Sunday, but I don't feel lonely because
of that. So it's a sense of belonging that really matters, you know.
And it goes back to the point that I made earlier. Do people
really know what they're answering when they ask when they are asked about being lonely,
because maybe they're associating a different word with loneliness, a different definition,
maybe they don't feel like they belong or maybe they don't feel adequate when compared
to the rest of their social group, and that's what they're really defining.
But as far as loneliness in religion versus non religious, I really think it's
about the company you keep and not the kind of company that you have to
find. So that's my response there, What about yours? Yeah, I
think that's that's a good point. And also there is an idea of frame
of reference when you are born into a religious family and you're used to being
surrounded by all your congregation every time you do something outside your house, and
when you lose that, then yes, the frame of reference is that you
don't have as many people as you had before, and so you may feel
lonelier. But another person who has the exact same number of connections but it's
been like this for their entire life, there they may not feel lonely.
So it depends on how you grew up and and and what you've been exposed
to. There's another important point that I think is worth mentioning is there's a
woman who is in interviewed in the article and she's said, I'm a firm
believer that noneliness ultimately stems from a lack of a relationship with ourselves. The
real work lies not in creating meaningful relationships with others, but starting with creating
or building a healthy relationship with ourselves. And to come back to the divide
between younger and older people and how they express feeling loneliness, we also know
that younger people are more receptive and understanding of mental illnesses and mental issues,
and so maybe the fact that we are more aware of our mental issues means
that we may feel more normally because of this. I think that's something to
be looked into, because again it's correlation and causation may not be applying here,
but I think there's still something to test here, because if if we
have people who realize how an adequate they feel compared to their social group,
and also the fact that we have more abut Qui people who identify as such
in the younger population, then this sentence that this woman wrote makes much much
more sense. And yeah, I think there's something to look into there.
You bring up a very interesting point about the divide in generations when it comes
to being more aware of behavioral health and how that actually coincides with how we
relate to ourselves and also how we relate to other people. And I would
definitely say that And this is just you know, from observation and even from
looking at how younger generations of people you know, speak and relate to one
another, and even what they are aware of versus like you know, maybe
like a boomer generation or a silent generation, they happen to seem to be
more in touch and more empathetic per se when it comes to even themselves.
Now, with that being said, can we kind of explore that this a
little bit. I know that we're like running out of time, but I
think it's something that's like really important to touch on. Is that whole being
in touch with being more aware of you know, behavior, health and mental
issues and even being empathetic. Cindy, can you kind of expand on that
a little bit and then, you know, Jimmy, I would like your
response to that as well. Yeah. I think the fact that more knowledge
has been acquiring in the last thirty years about psychology and neurobiology and neuroscience in
general, that made us more aware of our not necessarily issues, but the
way we think is much more programmed. Than we used to think and so
programmed in a way that it depends on what we went through, It depends
on how we were raised, depends on our genetics, it depends on so
many factors, and so realizing this and realizing that it can have a lot
of impact on ourselves and the way which with others. Then that's why we
have some people now who are younger, who realize this more because we are
in touch with medias that tell us this and we learn more about this.
Again, social media gives us access to so much knowledge, and the older
people may not spend so much time on it, and then they learn less
and stay stuck with the knowledge they had at the time. So I think
that that has an impact here as well. You, Jimmy, what are
your thoughts? Yeah, well, I think that the awareness of mental health
issues certainly plays out in our youth versus generations where you just didn't talk about
mental health, right, And I think that that is reflected in the answers
to this survey. And I can see members of the youth who were surveyed
who said, well, you know, yeah, maybe I do feel lonely,
and it's because of these reasons where you have the elderly that are answering
and saying, oh, now, I'm fine. You know, I think
that that is something to be considered as well. You know, there's a
generational gap not only in the way that we use technology or the way that
we define loneliness, but even a willingness to acknowledge some of the stages that
we are in, or some of the some of the mindsets or placement that
we have as far as our mentality goes. You know, that also,
I would venture to say, probably had an impact on the results of this
survey. Yeah, I think that you're right with that. I think that
both of you all really hit the nail on the head about especially being aware
of, you know, your basically how human behavior works, because we have so m