Loneliness Tied to Bad Health; Quality of Friends Matters

Lonely people are less healthy, and the quality of friendships is more important than the quantity, according to researchers at the University of Arizona.

Having hundreds of friends on Facebook or dozens of followers on Twitter does not prevent the effects of loneliness.  The quality and depth of connections with others is as important or more important than the numbers of people you can count as “friends.”

In a study of over 250 adults between the ages of 19 and 85, Chris Segrin and Stacey Passalacqua of the University of Arizona Communication Department found that people who did not have close relationships with family members or friends experienced more stress and got less sleep.

Even being married or in a partnered relationship was no guarantee that a person would not be lonely and experience additional stress as a result. If the tie with the partner was not a close one, people could still experience loneliness.

On the other hand, living father away from close friends or family was not necessarily a problem. If the friendship was well established before a person moved away, close relationships maintained at a distance using phone or electronic means still prevented feelings of loneliness.

In a second study, Segrin working with Tricia Domschke found that lonely people got less pleasure from vacations and other leisure activities, and also that they got less refreshment and regeneration from sleeping. Together, the two studies suggest that loneliness produces chronic levels of moderate stress that interfere with sleep and other normal physical processes.

In addition, the researchers found that loneliness is a matter of perception. Specifically, whether or not a person perceives themselves to be lonely depends upon how much social interaction they want. Those who want less interaction to begin with do not see themselves as lonely or experience the additional stress as long as they are getting the amount of social interactions that they perceive as right for them.

Nurturing close and meaningful relationships with friends and family, then, can be an important part of managing stress and staying healthy.

Segrin and Passalacqua’s study was published in the June issue of the journal Health Communication. The study authored by Segrin and Domschke will appear in a future issue of the same journal.