Older adult loneliness: myths and realities

By P. Dykstra. European Journal of Ageing, 2009

605 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The focus in this paper is on the social domain of quality of life, and more particularly loneliness. The empirical literature on older adult loneliness is reviewed, thereby challenging three often-held assumptions that figure prominently in public debates on loneliness. The first assumption that loneliness is a problem specifically for older people finds only partial support. Loneliness is common only among the very old. The second assumption is that people in individualistic societies are most lonely. Contrary to this belief, findings show that older adults in northern European countries tend to be less lonely than those in the more familialistic southern European countries. The scarce data on Central and Eastern Europe suggest a high prevalence of older adult loneliness in those countries. The third assumption that loneliness has increased over the past decades finds no support. Loneliness levels have decreased, albeit slightly. The review notes the persistence of ageist attitudes, and underscores the importance of considering people’s frame of reference and normative orientation in analyses of loneliness.

Subfields: Health, Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/db00e448bac15df654eb9955a5bf01eb8996da1d

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Citations in the corpus

The De Jong Gierveld short scales for emotional and social loneliness: tested on data from 7 countries in the UN generations and gender surveys (2010, neutral): “It is often thought that loneliness is a problem present specifically among older adults; however, this assumption finds only limited support (Dykstra 2009).”
Living arrangements, intergenerational support types and older adult loneliness in Eastern and Western Europe (2012, neutral): “The regional differences in loneliness seem to be attributable to population composition rather than interaction effects where the importance of individual-level predictors varies between countries (Dykstra 2009).”
Use of Direct Versus Indirect Approaches to Measure Loneliness in Later Life (2012, background): “loneliness, direct measurement, indirect measurement, HRS Loneliness is a socially prevalent phenomenon among older adults, mainly at advanced ages (Dykstra, 2009; Dykstra, Van Tilburg, & de Jong Gierveld, 2005).”
What Predicts Loneliness? Cultural Difference Between Individualistic and Collectivistic Societies in Europe (2014, background): “In both studies, we replicated that married older adults experience lower levels of loneliness than unmarried ones, and that living alone and having a long-term illness significantly increased the frequency of loneliness—all factors that reduce the opportunity for social and emotional connections—wh”
Strength and Vulnerability Integration (SAVI): A Model of Emotional Well-Being Across Adulthood (2010, neutral): “Researchers have studied the negative effects of loneliness for people as young as 5 years old to those in later adulthood (e.g., Asher & Paquette, 2003; Dykstra, 2009).”
Bidirectional Dynamics of Materialism and Loneliness: Not Just a Vicious Cycle (2013, positive): “Inaddition to this, initial loneliness increased linearly with age although the absolute changes were modest, as observed before (Cacioppo and Patrick 2008; Dykstra 2009).”
Loneliness around the world: Age, gender, and cultural differences in loneliness (2021, background): “The majority of the evidence tends to suggest lower levels of loneliness in individualistic compared to collectivist countries (see Dykstra, 2009 for a review) although there is some evidence to the contrary (e,.g., Rokach, Orzeck, Cripps, Lackovic-Grgin, & Penezic, 2001; Van Tilburg, Havens, & de…”
The Prevalence of Loneliness Among Adults: A Case Study of the United Kingdom (2012, background): “…and evaluating interventions that aim to reduce loneliness within the United Kingdom and elsewhere (Anderson, 1998; De Jong Gierveld, 1998, 2006; Dykstra, 2009; Heylen, 2010; Johnson and Mullins, 1987; Peplau and Perlman, 1982; Rokach, 2000a; Routaslo and Pitkala, 2002; Scarf and De Jong…”
New Ways of Theorizing and Conducting Research in the Field of Loneliness and Social Isolation (2018, background): “Between 20 and 30% of middle-aged and young-old respondents report moderate or serious loneliness, of those aged 80 and over, 40–50% say they are ‘often’ lonely (Dykstra, 2009).”
The older, the lonelier? Risk factors for social loneliness in old age (2010, background): “Many studies have shown that this common view of the relationships between old age, social losses and loneliness is not straightforward (e.g. Dykstra 2009; Fees, Martin and Poon 1999; Shute and Howitt 1990), but few have disentangled the complex interrelationships.”
Loneliness and physical activity: A systematic review (2016, background): “The intervention studies, in particular, are less generalizable due to their senior samples, although, as seniors have a higher prevalence of loneliness (Dykstra, 2009), these samples are suitable to prove the existence of a loneliness-reducing effect of physical activity.”