🎟️ How to Be Alone but Not Lonely
The latest science shows how news and culture magnify feelings of loneliness
Back in September 2024, I wrote about a study linking loneliness with a 16% greater chance of mortality. For many people, feeling lonely doesn’t just hurt, it may actually predict an earlier death.
One reader left an interesting comment on that article:
“On a personal note, I've "overcome loneliness" recently. I've never had friends but I've been journalling and crafting a solitary life and I no longer feel loneliness even though I'm alone. I wonder if I'd be privy to those same morbidity factors you mentioned”
My response was that I would expect the morbidity effects to go hand-in-hand with emotional suffering. If people feel perfectly happy alone, there’s less reason to think that solitude will translate into physical health problems and earlier death. But it’s also perfectly possible that even when you’re happy alone, you lack certain protective qualities of social connection: helpful friends when you’re sick or supportive people when you’re dealing with life stresses for example.
To answer this question, we need research. Fortunately, earlier this month, researchers at the University of Michigan revealed new evidence on exactly this question.
🏝️ How do you feel about being alone?
In a paper published in February 2025, researchers first looked at how US news media portray issues of solitude. After systematically reviewing all relevant articles published between 2020-2022 in the top 10 US newspapers, the researchers saw that headlines were 10x more likely to portray being alone as emotionally harmful than emotionally positive.
This is unsurprising given that people typically want good friends and family. However, it does mean that media coverage and public health guidance may inadvertently add emotional risk to people’s lives when they lack a strong social network (e.g. when moving home or when living through a pandemic). We are all influenced by what we read and observe, and if the world is repeatedly telling us that we suffer when alone, it may reinforce emotional vulnerability instead of a healthy perspective on solitude.
To understand whether these kinds of communications could actually be causing greater emotional vulnerability, the researchers recruited 456 participants in the US and assigned them randomly to one of three conditions:
Benefits: Read an article about the benefits of being alone
Risks: Read an article about the risks of being alone
Control: Read an article unrelated to issues of being alone
After reading their assigned articles, all participants completed a survey about their general beliefs. When asked what they thought about solitude, participants who read the benefits article rather than the other two articles were significantly more likely to respond with emotionally positive beliefs.
In another real-life observational study, the researchers asked 161 participants about their beliefs related to solitude. They then surveyed each person repeatedly for 2 weeks about feelings of loneliness and how much time they had spent with other people each day.
Negative beliefs about solitude predicted greater feelings of loneliness when people were on their own, while positive beliefs predicted lower feelings of loneliness. If people reported spending “a great deal of time alone” in a particular survey, their prior beliefs based on the previous survey had a dramatic impact: negative beliefs predicted a 53% increase in loneliness while positive beliefs predicted a 13% decrease in loneliness.
Similar effects held across countries including Japan, Brazil, UK, Spain, and Poland, suggesting that beliefs about being alone universally impact people’s loneliness and well-being.
Whatever culture you live in, your perceptions about being alone are likely to determine how you feel when you don’t have many friends around you. And importantly, the mainstream narrative around what it means to be alone—the TV shows you watch or the news media you read—affect those perceptions.
Based on the evidence above, exposure to negative viewpoints on solitude drives greater emotional pain and loneliness. Since this kind of exposure is the norm (at least in US media), it’s important to cultivate more resilient thinking patterns about the emotional consequences of spending time alone.
⭐️ Takeaway tips
#1. Don’t fear being alone
Humans generally thrive in social groups, but that doesn’t mean there are no advantages to being alone. Pretty much all of us have moments in our daily lives when we don’t particularly want to interact with people and would rather focus on ourselves. The challenge is that sometimes we can’t choose—if we move to a different country or get stuck at home during a pandemic lockdown, we’ll inevitably have a weak social support system for a while. Cultivating and maintaining a positive mindset in those moments is difficult but important. It can make the difference between aching loneliness and optimistic patience while enjoying some solitude.
#2. Be resilient to the stories around you
The media can influence social norms and shift our thinking without us even noticing. Stories are incredibly powerful, and we need to keep our guard up against those that may not serve us well. Stories of terror, humiliation, and hate are only ever a finger tap away, and they’re usually full of spin rather than a straightforward illustration of facts. When narratives talk about pain and depression in the context of loneliness, they may be true, but they may also be missing the broader picture and simplifying a complex story. Being alone isn’t the same thing as feeling lonely, and many people can craft happy and fulfilled lives even when they can’t find strong social connections.
#3. Continue to prioritize a healthy social network
To avoid falling into the trap of simplistic stories myself, I should highlight that social connection remains incredibly valuable, and the research above shouldn’t mislead people into thinking they don’t need social support from friends and family. Some people will find it easier than others to enjoy solitude, and some will be more vulnerable to loneliness. It’s important to find a balance between enjoying your own company and looking for ways to develop deeper social connections.
“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves… By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies — all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.”
~ Aldous Huxley