According to a global survey, about 33 percent of adults experienced feelings of loneliness worldwide. Brazil had the highest percentage of people experiencing this, with 50 percent of respondents declaring that they felt lonely either often, always, or sometimes. Turkey, India, and Saudi Arabia followed, with 43 percent to 46 percent of respondents having experienced loneliness at least sometimes. On the contrary, the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, and Russia registered the largest share of interviewees which did not feel lonely.

Coping with loneliness during the pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly cut off people from all over the world from their social life, and the lack of companionship has been a difficult situation for many to cope with. In the United States, people who experienced lack of company were, unsurprisingly, individuals living alone, and unemployed, disabled, or unemployed people. In relation to mental health, Americans who reported more symptoms of depression were by far more likely to feel lonely.

Impact of mental health According to a survey conducted in 2021 among G7 countries, about seven in 10 people experienced a worsening of their psychological health during the pandemic. A study on clinician-reported changes in selected health behaviors in the United States showed that during the pandemic patients have suffered more from feelings of loneliness, depression or anxiety, and burnout. Also nutrition and other habits have been impacted. The study reported an increase in alcohol consumption, smoking cigarettes, poor nutrition, and use of other substances.

A 2022 survey conducted in 16 countries found that feelings of loneliness tend to decrease with age. That year, nearly 60 percent of young adults between 18 and 24 years reported negative effects on wellbeing from feelings of loneliness, while around 22 percent of respondents aged 65 and older reported the same. This statistic shows the percentage of people worldwide who reported negative effects on wellbeing from feelings of loneliness in 2022, by age group.

Percentage of persons aged 15 years and over by frequency with which they feel lonely, by gender, for Canada, regions and provinces.

Loneliness outcomes for disabled people in England aged 16 years and over, with analysis by age, sex, impairment severity and region using the Community Life Survey (CLS) data.

In June 2020, more than half of U.S. adults aged 50-80 years felt isolated from others due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In comparison, 27 percent of older adults felt so before the pandemic in October 2018. This statistic portrays the percentage of older adults in the U.S. who reported feeling lonely or isolated before and during the COVID-19 pandemic as of June 2020.

In the past months, many countries have adopted varying degrees of lockdown restrictions to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. According to the existing literature, some consequences of lockdown restrictions on people’s lives are beginning to emerge. To inform policies for the current and/or future pandemics, particularly those involving lockdown restrictions, this study adopted a data-driven Machine Learning approach to uncover the short-term effects of lockdown on people’s physical and mental health. An online questionnaire launched on 17 April 2020 was completed by 2,276 people from 66 countries. Focusing on the UK sample (N=382), 10 aggregated variables representing participant’s living environment, physical and mental health were used to train a RandomForest model to predict the week of survey completion. Using an index of importance to identify the best predictor among the 10 variables, self perceived loneliness was identified as the most influential variable. Subsequent statistical analysis showed a significant U-shaped curve for loneliness levels, with a decrease during the 4th and 5th lockdown weeks. The same pattern was replicated in the Greek sample (N = 129). This suggests that for the very first period of time, the adopted lockdown measures affected people’s evaluation of their social support leading to a decreased sense of loneliness.

The percentage of adults (aged 16 and over) that responded to the question "How often do you feel lonely?" with "Always or often" or "Some of the time"

Rationale At the beginning of 2018, the Prime Minister highlighted the issue of loneliness, announcing a Minister for Loneliness and committing to develop a national strategy to help tackle loneliness and a national measure for loneliness.

The national strategy, A Connected Society: A Strategy for Tackling Loneliness, was published on 15 October 2018. The commitments made by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England in the strategy identify loneliness to be a serious public health concern.

In keeping with the Loneliness Strategy, loneliness is defined here as: “a subjective, unwelcome feeling of lack or loss of companionship. It happens when we have a mismatch between the quantity and quality of social relationships that we have, and those that we want.” This is based on a definition first suggested by Perlman and Peplau in 1981(1).

Loneliness is a feeling that most people will experience at some point in their lives. When people feel lonely most or all of the time, it can have a serious impact on an individual’s well-being and their ability to function in society. Feeling lonely frequently is linked to early deaths and its health impact is thought to be on a par with other public health priorities like obesity or smoking.

Lonely people are more likely to be readmitted to hospital or have a longer stay. There is also evidence that lonely people are more likely to visit a General Practitioner or Accident and Emergency and more likely to enter local authority funded residential care.

At work, higher loneliness among employees is associated with poorer performance on tasks and in a team, while social interaction at work has been linked to increased productivity.

Loneliness can affect anyone of any age and background. It is important to measure loneliness because the evidence on loneliness is currently much more robust and extensive on loneliness in older people, but much less for other age groups including children and young people.

If more people measure loneliness in the same way, we will build a much better evidence base more quickly. That’s why the Prime Minister asked the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to develop national indicators of loneliness for people of all ages, suitable for use on major studies.

When reporting the prevalence of loneliness, ONS advise using the responses from the direct question, “How often do you feel lonely?” The inclusion of the direct loneliness measure in the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) will help inform and focus future work on loneliness at both a national and local level, providing a focus to support strategic leadership, policy decisions and service commissioning.

In this first set of data on loneliness prevalence at a local authority level, we have merged the two most frequent categories of feeling lonely (often or always and some of the time). This is due to small sample sizes and the limitations of this data will be explained in more detail in the caveats section.

This will be replaced next year by a 2-year pooled dataset which will have large enough sample sizes to report chronic loneliness. Presenting the data this year will help local authorities to work preventatively to tackle chronic loneliness by showing whether a local area has higher than national average levels of loneliness.

(1) Perlman D and Peplau LA (1981) 'Toward a Social Psychology of Loneliness', in Gilmour R and Duck S (eds.), Personal Relationships. 3, Personal Relationships in Disorder, London: Academic Press, pp. 31–56.

Definition of numerator Weighted number of respondents aged 16 and over, with a valid response to the question "How often do you feel lonely" that answered "Always or often" or "Some of the time". Active Lives Adult Survey data is collected November to November.

Definition of denominator Weighted number of respondents aged 16 and over, with a valid response to the question "How often do you feel lonely?".Denominator values in the Download data are unweighted counts. All analyses for this indicator have been weighted to be representative of the population of England.Active Lives Adult Survey data is collected November to November.

Caveats

Due to the sample size at local authority level, the "often or always" category is merged with the next most severe category of loneliness (people who respond as feeling lonely “some of the time”).

Standard practice is to report the two categories separately. However, data from other sources shows a degree of volatility in the ratio between these categories at the local authority (LA) level.

Therefore, there is a risk that when two local authorities are both reported as having 25% of people feeling lonely (often or always combined with some of the time), the actual figures for "often or always" might differ significantly. For example, one LA might have 24% often and always while another has only 3%, which would not be apparent in the combined category.

This could lead to underestimation or overestimation of chronic loneliness levels by local authorities.

Percentage of persons aged 15 years and over by frequency with which they feel lonely, by gender and other selected sociodemographic characteristics: age group; immigrant status; visible minority group; Indigenous identity; persons with a disability, difficulty or long-term condition; LGBTQ2+ people; highest certificate, diploma or degree; main activity; and urban and rural areas.

Personal well-being, loneliness and what people in Great Britain felt were important issues; indicators from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).

A survey of U.S. adults from December 2021 found that 57 percent of men and 59 percent of women felt lonely. This statistic shows the percentage of adults in the United States who reported feeling lonely as of December 2021, by gender.

Estimates of loneliness and personal well-being during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic by country, region, county and local and unitary authorities. This dataset also includes outputs from regression models which consider the personal characteristics significantly associated with levels of loneliness and well-being both during and prior to the pandemic affecting the UK.

This is the original unedited data set for the manuscript "The Role of Trait Mindfulness in the Association between Loneliness and Psychological Distress".

The survey includes:

Demographics The University of California Los Angeles Loneliness Scale–Version 3 (UCLA-LS; Russell, 1996) The Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire–Short Form (FFMQ-SF; Bohlmeijer et al., 2011) The 21-item Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) Questions regarding mindfulness and meditation practice Questions regarding relationships and home location and household composition Questions regarding the impact of COVID-19 measures on employment.

References Bohlmeijer, E., ten Klooster, P. M., Fledderus, M., Veehof, M., & Baer, R. (2011). Psychometric properties of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire in depressed adults and development of a short form. Assessment, 18(3), 308-320. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191111408231 Lovibond, S. H., & Lovibond, P. F. (1995). Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (2nd ed.). Psychology Foundation. Russell, D. W. (1996). UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3): Reliability, validity, and factor structure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66(1), 20-40. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa6601_2

Between March and June 2020, among U.S. adults aged 50-80 years who got enough sleep just one day a week or less, 55 percent reported feeling a lack of companionship some of the time or often. In comparison, among those who got enough sleep every day or several times a week, while still high, just 38 percent felt a lack of companionship. This statistic depicts the percentage of older adults in the U.S. who reported feeling lonely or isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic from March to June 2020, by amount of sleep.

This statistic shows the percentage of people engaging in specific coping behaviors when they feel lonely or socially isolated in the U.S. as of 2018. Among those reporting loneliness and social isolation, 78 percent indicated that they almost always or sometimes distract themselves with TV, computer, or video games when they are feeling lonely.

The attached .csv file contains data obtained from an online survey available between to participants between November 2020 and January 2021. The principle outcome variable is loneliness and the principle exposure is chronotype.For more information please contact ray.norbury@brunel.ac.uk

Analysis of loneliness in Great Britain during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey.