MEN & LONELINESS

Highlights

• More than 30% of men (Generation Z and Millennials, in particular) reported feeling lonely in 2018 and this number is rising, with estimates as high as 45%.

• Low income, low education, unmarried, poor health status, and social isolation are known predictors of loneliness for men.

• Men benefit more from marriage than do women and fare less well than women when single or widowed. A dramatic rise in unmarried, unpartnered men coexists with the rise in male loneliness.

• Hispanic, black, and gay men are lonelier than their white and heterosexual counterparts.

• The consequences of male loneliness are alarming, particularly with respect to its known risk for suicidal behavior and its relationship with poorer cardiovascular and cancer outcomes.

• Hegemonic masculinity, commonly associated with “macho” behavior in Western societies, may be damaging boys and men, creating social disconnectedness, a lack of optimism, increased despair, and higher susceptibility to unhealthy online communities

• Protective factors against loneliness for men include regular social engagement in group activities (“doing something” together) and activities that increase a sense of belonging, free of pressure to conform to masculine stereotypes.

In May of 2023, the U.S. Surgeon general, released an 85-page advisory declaring loneliness as a public health epidemic in the United states. And this is not the first time Dr. Vivek Murthy has discussed the perils of loneliness. While no doubt the global coronavirus pandemic and its lockdowns have made loneliness even worse, particularly among groups that already suffered from it, even before the pandemic, loneliness was becoming a national concern for many countries. A 2018 Kaiser Family Foundation survey revealed that more than a fifth of adults in the U.S. (22 percent) and the U.K. (23 percent) “often” or “always” felt lonely, including a lack of companionship, feeling left out, or feeling isolated from others. In 2018 and again in 2019, Cigna reported that nearly half of all men and women surveyed reported feelings of loneliness and, once conceived of as a problem mainly affecting the elderly, loneliness is staggeringly prevalent among younger individuals (see Figure 1) comprising Generation Z (=/< 24 years) and Millennials (25-40 years).

DEFINING LONELINESS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES:

Loneliness is characterized by an emotional state of social disconnection and dissatisfaction due to the perception of social needs or support (quantity and/or quality) not being met. A 2020 study substantiated earlier research that strong predictors of loneliness include widowhood, no spouse/partner, disability, and limited contact with friends. Conversely personality traits of extraversion and emotional stability were associated with less loneliness.

Loneliness is implicated in numerous health related problems including premature all-cause mortality, higher risk of death from cancer and cardiovascular disease, poorer outcome measures across many chronic diseases, and decreases in quality of life including impaired mental, emotional, social, and behavioral functioning, including higher risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors especially in younger adults. And loneliness can have long term consequences as evidenced by an increased risk for developing depression years following a bout of loneliness and increased odds of dementia later in life versus non-lonely peers.

GENDER AND LONELINESS:

The exploration of the age x gender interaction on loneliness has revealed mixed results. Research in 1985 and 1995 examining loneliness in University sophomores found that male college students were slightly lonelier than women. Most data from the later 1990s and 2000s have specified that, regardless of age, women are lonelier than men. More recently, in 2018, the Kaiser Foundation in partnership with The Economist telephone surveyed approximately 1000 individuals from each of 3 countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan) regarding loneliness and social isolation. Compared to 1 in 10 reporting loneliness in Japan, more than a fifth of the U.S. and U.K. respondents said they often felt lonely, lacked companionship, or felt isolated from others. In the US and the UK rates of loneliness reporting were higher for women than they were for men.

Cigna partnered with Ipso for a 2018 online survey of 20,000 men and women and concluded that “most Americans feel lonely.” Nearly 50% of male and female respondents alike endorsed various statements indicative of loneliness, with the loneliest individuals being from the Z and Millennial generations. In the exploratory analysis, greater loneliness was associated with lower education, unemployment, single status, and lower income. Relative to other factors, social support, meaningful daily interactions, and low social anxiety were the strongest predictors of decreased loneliness. To a lesser but significant extent greater age, being married or cohabitating, satisfaction with time spent with family and with friends, adequate sleep, daily use of Facebook, and perceived good health were negatively associated with loneliness and were hypothesized as potential protectors against loneliness. Loneliness was not associated with gender in the 2018 survey.

However, in 2019 Cigna followed up with a national online survey of 10,000 U.S. adults to further explore key determinants of loneliness, particularly the impact loneliness has in the workplace. Key findings from their 2019 survey that was published in 2020 suggest an overall increase in loneliness (from 54% of respondents reporting feelings of loneliness in the 2018 survey to just over 60% reporting the same in 2019). Consistent with prior research in the past decade, many Cigna respondents reporting loneliness were from the younger generations. Specifically, nearly 8 in 10 Generation Z’ers and seven in ten Millennials reported some degree of loneliness. This is compared to only 50% of baby boomers.

Unlike its 2018 survey, Cigna reported more males were experiencing loneliness in the 2019 follow up survey. While both men and women reported increases in loneliness from the first to the second survey, the increases were greater for men on various loneliness statements. A lack of meaningful relationships, though endorsed by both genders during 2018 and 2019, was endorsed with greater frequency among the men than women during the second survey. Cigna hypothesized that this greater sense of isolation may be related to men’s experiences within their work environments as 1/3 of employed men reported feeling abandoned by coworkers when under pressure and feeling alienated from coworkers. The most dramatic gender-loneliness difference within the workplace was found in 41% of men reporting a “general sense of emptiness” when at work compared to 29% of women.

IS THERE A CRISIS OF MALE LONELINESS?

Google “men and loneliness” and there unfolds a reservoir of angst. Men from all backgrounds are expressing their untold stories of loneliness across a wide landscape of blogs, men’s organizations, health publications, YouTube videos, podcasts, and social media sites. However, peer reviewed, scholarly evidence supporting the claims that men are significantly lonelier than women is limited and mixed.

Some recent evidence suggests that, in comparison to the overall male population and their female counterparts, it is specific subpopulations of men that are more challenged with greater levels of loneliness. As previously mentioned, what is consistently evident across the studies and the surveys of the last several years is that loneliness is NOT just a problem of older years. Rather, Millennials and now Z Generation individuals are experiencing the greatest rates of loneliness across the lifespan. Preliminary data suggest it may be in these younger years where the effect size of gender is greatest, and especially so among nonwhite individuals, persons with low levels of education, sexual minority status, single individuals, and those with poor physical or mental health. For example, while both men and women of all races and sexual identities report more frequent loneliness, 18 – 35-year-old, nonwhite men and LGBTQ men report either more frequent or more severe loneliness relative to their female and their white heterosexual male counterparts.

Men from all backgrounds are expressing their untold stories of loneliness across a landscape of blogs, men’s organizations, health publications, YouTube videos, podcasts, and social media sites.”

RISK FACTORS:

Several risk factors for loneliness have been known for some time including social isolation, significant life event loss, poverty, minority status, low education level, restricted social networks, preexisting mental illness, social exclusion due to discrimination and racism, punitive or shaming behavior of gender expression and limiting gender affirmative care, widowhood, physical disability and chronic health problems, younger age (18 – 35) and very old age (80+). The concern about loneliness for males among generations Z and X is that they are particularly vulnerable, exhibiting steeper increases in loneliness versus women, when confronted by high-risk circumstances. Moreover, the cost to their physical, emotional, and behavioral functioning is hefty and at times deadly.

Living alone is a stronger predictor of loneliness for men than women. But more than the experience of loneliness, men (versus women) living alone have a greater all-cause mortality risk, poorer rates of survival from cancer, and elevated risk of cardiovascular disease. And though women are reported to have more suicide ideation, men’s rates of completed suicide are three times higher. The number of suicides in the United States rose dramatically between 2020 and 2021 for both genders, but the highest increase was an increase of 8% among males ages 15-24. And while it is tempting to implicate the COVID-19 pandemic, the suicide rates pre-pandemic would suggest that there are other or additional factors driving the increase. Since 1999 the suicide rate increased by 35%, reaching a record number of 48,344 suicide deaths in 2018 before a steady decline in 2019 and 2020.

POTENTIAL CAUSES:

Research in the past several years highlights a growing trend of social disconnect among men that, at least in part, is responsible for the rising rates of loneliness. Men in the United States report feeling that their lives are precarious, their futures uncertain, and their identities threatened. They are graduating from college at record low numbers, are losing their footing in the labor and income arena, are finding it difficult to partner with women, and are seeing their social networks shrink, leaving them without quality supportive friendships. In the past 3 decades, marriage has fallen from 67% in 1990 to just under 53% in 2019. This decline in partner status is most steep among men of all racial and ethnic groups apart from black women.

According to the 2023 research report by the Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice men ages 25 to 34 are faring very poorly with increases in suicide, drug overdose deaths, decreases in college and even high school graduation, are more likely to own guns and commit gun related crimes than women, are less likely to have close friends, and of great concern is that they are less likely to receive mental health services than are women.

Researchers and mental providers such as those with Equimundo, John Radcliffe, research head of The Loneliness Center at Sheffield Hallam University, and New York University psychology professor Niobe Way are convinced that hegemonic masculinity, commonly associated with “macho” behavior in Western societies, is damaging boys and men, creating social disconnectedness, a lack of optimism, increased despair, and higher susceptibility to unhealthy online communities such as the manosphere. Hegemonic masculinity, what some call toxic masculinity, is thought to stifle the necessary expression of emotion and vulnerability essential to establishing loving and supportive relationships; and instead showcases aggression, physical strength, competitiveness and male dominance. This, in turn, further pushes young men into online gaming, pornography, and increases exposure to restricted ideas about gender and masculinity escalating the devastating, costly social ills including loneliness, depression, and suicide. Conversely, protective factors against loneliness for men include regular social engagement in group activities (“doing something” together) and activities that increase a sense of belonging, free of pressure to conform to masculine stereotypes.

CONCLUSION:

A male crisis of loneliness? Perhaps the question of how lonely America’s men are relative to women holds little utility. It may never be a question with a consensus answer as individual and collective identities are not unidimensional and static; and human emotion and cognition and behavior are inextricably and bidirectionally linked to the social networks that give rise to and are then shaped by the human experience of loneliness. Perhaps the question worthy of dramatic headlines is one that explores the extent to which these men are disconnected from others, exhibiting suicide behavior, and experiencing more severe physical and mental consequences of loneliness.

It is promising that there is a growing awareness of loneliness and its most vulnerable victims. That it has been a surprise to many that our younger population, particularly younger men, have been feeling adrift, alone, angry, and without necessary social support, is a universal wakeup call: we need to pay better attention to one another. The costs of unaddressed loneliness are not isolated to one individual or subgroup. When one is lost it is not long before we are all potentially lost. Understanding any one or group of us is to become intimately familiar with the complex, interconnected, relational world that makes our existence, our purpose, our humanity what we have come to know and all we hope it to be.