Most people know that social connections are important for proper social functioning and development, but fewer people are not aware of just how directly social isolation affects your health. Social isolation is when someone does not feel like they fit in, and they do not have many friends or other human relationships.
Loneliness has many negative outcomes. Being unmarried increases the chance of mental issues, but not having friends affects physical health more. Some studies found that women experienced more loneliness than men, but others reported the opposite. This study found that social isolation increased loneliness in women which seems obvious, of course, anyone who felt social isolation would feel lonely, right? Well, the findings suggest that is not the case because men who were socially isolated were not found to be more lonely. Why is this true? The most likely answer is that men tend to get most of their social activity with their marriages, at least as they age. Unmarried men had much poorer life outcomes than those in healthy marriages.
A recent study focusing on Chinese elders found that individuals who were more socially isolated and lonely had fewer teeth and their teeth were decaying at a faster rate than their less lonely peers.
In the past 20 years, overall social isolation has increased drastically. This trend does not only show a decline in engaging with friends but also in family social interactions. Now people get most of their social interactions from work. This is concerning because most work social interactions are relatively superficial because people worry about saying the right things to not get fired or offend the right people. Intimate and challenging conversations are vastly limited in work settings.
We are now only scratching the surface of all the possible adverse effects of social isolation.
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