Most loneliness solutions don’t work! Can we talk about why?
I sometimes wonder if I am the only one who has noticed that as loneliness solutions have proliferated, the problem of loneliness has only gotten worse. I started thinking and reading deeply about loneliness 10 years ago when my father became my road map for what happens to a person experiencing chronic loneliness. My folks had moved closer to family 12-years earlier, but they had never formed a local social network for a cup of coffee, a movie or a quick lunch. My dad loved meeting new people and I rarely met anyone who didn’t love to have him around. After my mom passed, I thought it would be easy to help him find some new local friends. I would recommend a program at the JCC, the local Y or a movie class. I was convinced that going to these activities and being around likeminded people would result in new friends for someone as fun and likable as my dad. However, I began to realize that for my dad, and as I would learn millions of others, loneliness creates a biological response that changes a person in ways that and make it hard to form new connections.
Loneliness Causes Bad Behavior
Just as our bodies tell us that we are hungry or tired, loneliness is the body's mechanism to motivate our behavior to create or improve relationships. But what happens when you don’t or can’t respond to this signal?
Have you ever been around someone who is hangry (simultaneously hungry and angry)? That is our brain changing our behavior when we fail to respond to our body’s signal to act. It’s not fun to be around a hangry person, but we learn pretty quickly that if we feed them, the bad behavior vanishes. When we don’t respond to our body’s signal for connection, loneliness drives a similar biological response, making us self-centered and self-protective in ways that often show up as disagreeable behaviors. What’s more, these behaviors are often contagious, spreading through a community like a virus. The response is primal, going back to when we lived in caves and being alone put our very survival at risk. Empathy is not helpful when you are trying to keep a sabretooth tiger from eating you.
Why don’t most platforms reach the lonely older adult?
We have known for more than 2 decades that just bringing people together or providing lots of activities is not a solution to loneliness. Yet, platforms that do just that continue to proliferate and promote themselves as the next innovative loneliness solution. The fact is that lonely older adults often don’t join the activity, program, or platform precisely because of how loneliness modifies their personality and changes how they see the world. If you were to sense the world through the eyes of a lonely older adult, you might feel:
a lack confidence to try new things
a reluctance to trust others
a worry that you won’t be able to figure out the new technology
a worry that your mobility challenge, or other impairment will make you look enfeebled
a fear of rejection
a fear that other people are a threat to your wellbeing
It is this hyper-vigilance that we need to overcome if we are going to get those lonely individuals to rejoin the community. The truth about these new activity platforms, services and tools is that they may be valuable for those already connected, but they are unlikely to overcome the habits of loneliness or bring the lonely back into community.
If you want to talk about how loneliness is affecting the behavior of residents or members in your community, schedule a call and learn how we can help. Or check out these links to lectures and articles about on how loneliness changes behavior:
1. Professor John Cacioppo: Loneliness. Lecture and Q&A at Cornell University
Adam Greene, Klaatch CEO and Founder
Adam has 20+ years of experience as an entrepreneur, senior executive in public and private companies and investment banking with expertise in corporate finance, M&A, management, team building and corporate strategy. It was the conversation with his father’s healthcare coordinator about the role that loneliness seemed to be playing in his father’s deteriorating health that was Adam’s tipping point for founding Klaatch.
