Men's loneliness is misunderstood, and the solution isn't just about social contact

Loneliness continues to plague our society, with six per cent of adults 16 and over – around two million - experiencing chronic loneliness in England, a number which has remained consistent over the last five years. This is deeply concerning – loneliness has been associated with depression, dementia, heart problems, and even death.

Men’s mental health is well established as having a distinct character, with notions of masculinity often said to be at the root of the problem. Suicide rates in men continue to be higher than in women, and loneliness can lead to suicidal thoughts. We therefore wanted to better understand loneliness in men and how it might differ from women’s experiences.

To do this, we led a statistical study using the English Longitudinal study of ageing, a big dataset of people aged 50+. This resulted in five notable findings.

Firstly, older men were slightly less likely to score as lonely than older women when asked three questions that didn’t explicitly use the word ‘lonely’. But when asked directly, using the term ‘lonely’, far fewer men saw themselves as lonely. Older men, then, were less likely to identify their experiences as ‘lonely’.

Secondly, older men who said they had felt lonely in the past week drank significantly more alcohol than older men who hadn’t felt lonely, whereas lonely older women drank less than their non-lonely counterparts. The men drank far more overall as well, indicating that lonely men were heavy drinkers.

Third, we looked at social isolation and loneliness, using measures of social contact and involvement in groups/clubs to look at isolation, and the three ‘indirect’ questions to measure loneliness. We found that severely isolated older men were no more likely to record a score of lonely than the rest of the men in the dataset, but severely isolated older women were over 700% more likely to record a score of lonely. Men either don’t care about being severely isolated, or such men underreport loneliness when responding to the indirect questions.

Fourth, we looked at how important being in a relationship was and found that older men in cohabiting relationships were the least lonely group, whereas older men who were previously married but no longer cohabiting were the most lonely. Previously married women were also lonelier than their cohabiting counterparts, but the difference was much smaller. Lastly, we found evidence that older men rated their friendships as lower quality than older women, and that this partly explained this greater association between relationship status and loneliness in men.

Overall, then, older men were less likely to state they are lonely, less likely to make deep social connections, and more reliant on wives/girlfriends, booze, and denial to tackle loneliness. Such results could be interpreted as men being victims of their own masculinity, an approach that has been criticised by some campaigners. Moreover, uncertainties remain. For instance, why avoid stating loneliness on a confidential survey? Nevertheless, it would be remiss to ignore the role of masculinities.

To better understand the context of this study, we decided to delve deeper into men’s understanding of loneliness, and conducted 20 in-depth interviews with men. In figure 1, taken from that study, you can see two things. The inner layer represents what loneliness was to men. Importantly, this goes beyond feelings of insufficient social relationships to about being focused on a meaningful task or activity, and being able to negotiate a sense of self-worth through their social connections. The opposite of loneliness, then, could be keeping busy, a sense of purpose, a feeling of pride because of one’s contribution to the world, having a sense of belonging, and many things not inherently requiring improved social relationships. This also meant that men did not always identify loneliness until after it had occurred, as the social context of its origins could impact them regardless of how they interpreted the experience in real time.

The outer layer represents the gender norms that impacted these feelings of loneliness. These weren’t just the men’s perspectives, but cultural constructs that could shape, influence, and impact the chances of loneliness, and the reasons for it. In a stark example, some gay men in the study relayed that severe loneliness in school was inevitable when their classmates were homophobic bullies. In another pertinent example, some men suggested that showing emotional vulnerability was something they desired, but negative responses to this from their peers meant this was unhelpful.

So what does this mean? Firstly, we need to broaden our understanding of what loneliness is. These studies suggest it is possible to suffer from loneliness without identifying it as ‘lonely’. Indeed, even if someone does identify it, they may not seek help. At King’s we are developing new technologies through the DELONELINESS project to help people detect when someone is lonely.

Led by Professor Wei Liu in the Department of Engineering, this smart monitoring and communication system will use multifunctional electronics built into clothes and home furniture to identify loneliness in older people. We hope that tools like this could reduce the stigma of seeking help, enabling people to take informed care choices once they realise they are lonely.

We also need interventions that go beyond encouraging social interaction. These could promote activities that bestow a sense of ‘purpose’ or ‘pride’ in people, even if they don’t improve social relationships (or the perception of them). Moreover, loneliness cannot just be treated in an individual. Policy and practice should look beyond interventions and at the bigger picture – how workplaces, education, communities, and so on can foster social connections, meaningful activities, and self-worth.

Although my work has focused on men, these findings may not solely relate to men, and will not be representative of all men’s experiences. The masculinities in the red circle (figure 1) are cultural ideas of masculinity identified in that study, but what my research has made clear is that any cultural idea or expectation of a person can impact whether and why they experience loneliness. Furthermore, the ’cycles’ of loneliness in the blue circle were not fixed – they could be interrupted, slowed, turned, and restarted. And on that note, there is cause for hope.