Disenfranchised Loneliness: Dying Singly in a Communal World (original) (raw)
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Technology and older adults in British loneliness policy and political discourse
Frontiers in Digital Health, 2023
Introduction: This article provides an analysis of recent loneliness policy and political discourses from the United Kingdom pertaining to older adults. Although government asserts that several groups in society are "at risk" of loneliness, older adults remain the most frequent targets of policy interventions. Technology is positioned as playing a role in the causation and alleviation of loneliness. Little research has examined loneliness in political discourses. Methods: With a focus on how loneliness intersects with themes of technology and aging, this article presents an analysis of discourses guided by Bacchi's What is the Problem Represented to Be (WPR) framework. It endeavors to answer the following questions: What is the problem of loneliness among older adults represented to be, and what is the role of technology in this contextproblem or solution? Results: In the discourses, assertions are made that issues of loneliness, societal change and digital exclusion are intertwined. Lonely older adults are problematized as hard to find and thus connect with interventions, warranting surveillance measures like loneliness heatmaps. Technological interventions to assist older adults in maintaining independence and connections to social networks are often proposed as solutions. The findings indicate dominant discourses position older adults primarily as subjects in need of care and as non-users of technology. Technology is positioned as a cost-effective tool to fill gaps in an overburdened and under-funded social care system that compounds issues of loneliness. Discussion: The author argues the neoliberal and stigmatizing undertones within the corpus may undermine efforts to combat loneliness. Further, austerity is silent in the dominant problematizations of loneliness, foreclosing upon alternatives that problematize loneliness as resulting from neoliberal policies that continue to dismantle public infrastructure and social care.
Lonely older people as a problem in societyconstruction in Finnish media
International Journal of …, 2011
Loneliness is a prevalent stereotype of old age but there is a lack of studies of how it is represented in mass media. This study examines how the loneliness of older people is portrayed in mass media. The research material consists of 154 texts from the leading 50+ magazines and ...
Health & Social Care in The Community, 2010
Loneliness is a pressing social issue for older people globally. Despite this, there is a paucity of studies on how older people themselves perceive loneliness and how service providers can support them. This study sought to address the gap using in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 60 older people and eight focus groups with aged care service providers in Australia in 2007. A purposive sampling strategy was employed to incorporate maximum participant variation. People 65 years and over were recruited from four large service providers in two Australian states. Our findings show that loneliness is influenced by private, relational and temporal dimensions and whether older people feel that they have, or are seen by others as having, a sense of connectedness with the wider community. Participants expressed the importance of maintaining social contact and having a sense of connection and belonging to the community. Our study highlights both the significance of gathering the views of older people to generate an understanding about loneliness and the need to recognise loneliness as a diverse and complex experience, bound to the context in which it is understood and perceived and not synonymous with social isolation. Such an understanding can be used to both evaluate and improve upon programmes that address loneliness and to help maintain an integration of older people in the community.
Loneliness in the EU. Insights from surveys and online media data
European Commission JRC Science for Policy Report, 2021
Research shows that loneliness and social isolation have harmful repercussions on mental and physical health, as well as significant consequences for social cohesion and community trust. Both loneliness and social isolation are therefore increasingly recognised as critical public health issues that deserve attention and need to be addressed with effective intervention strategies. The COVID-19 pandemic has also dramatically reshaped Europeans’ lives and social practices. Mobility restrictions and social distancing measures adopted to contain the spread of the virus have prompted public discussions about the unintended side effects of such arrangements, particularly in the form of loneliness and social isolation. Some fear that the toll of loneliness could have consequences long after the virus recedes. This report offers an overview of the current state of knowledge on loneliness and social isolation in the EU. It presents the main findings of two empirical analyses carried out by the JRC using two complementary sources of information, namely survey and online data. The analysis based on survey data offers a picture of recent trends in self-reported levels of loneliness across the EU and identifies the prevailing socio-demographic and geographical characteristics associated with loneliness before and during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey data show that the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the problem. The proportion of respondents that felt lonely frequently doubled following the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, young adults were hit more severely. The analysis based on online data looks at trends in online media reporting on loneliness and social isolation between January 2018 and January 2021. The volume of articles on these topics is measured on a monthly basis and by Member State, and the collected articles are analysed in depth to identify the prevailing sentiments contained in them and detect patterns in the underlying narratives. Online media reporting on loneliness and social isolation has doubled during the pandemic. Narratives largely concerned the health consequences of loneliness. The analysis of online media reporting catalogues also typologies and examples of policy initiatives aimed at combating loneliness and social isolation. Public initiatives vary across Member States. Overall, most interventions are designed at local level and are rarely part of more systematic programmes.
Health & social care in the community, 2017
Loneliness in later life is a common problem with poor health outcomes. However, interventions to prevent or ameliorate loneliness have a weak evidence base. The views of older people experiencing or at risk of loneliness in the community are important in identifying features of potential support, but have been little studied. Twenty-eight community dwelling people, aged 65 and over who reported being 'lonely much of the time' or identified as lonely from the de Jong Gierveld six-item loneliness scale in a larger study, participated in in-depth interviews, between June 2013 and May 2014. Views and experiences on seeking support from primary care and community based one-to-one and group based activities, including social and shared interest groups, were explored. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Thematic analysis was conducted by a multidisciplinary team, including older people. Using two different measures of loneliness enabled a spectrum of loneliness experience to...
The causes of loneliness: The perspective of young adults in London’s most deprived areas
PLOS ONE
Young adults are currently the loneliest demographic in the UK and other Western countries, yet little is known about how they see the causes of their loneliness. Thus, the objective of this study is to explore the subjective causes of loneliness among young adults (18–24 years old), particularly those of lower socio-economic status (SES) who are in employment, renting and living in the most deprived areas, since they are the loneliest in the UK. Utilising a free association technique and thematic analysis, and embedded in a phenomenological framework, the subjective causes of loneliness in a matched sample of 48 young adults in the four most deprived boroughs of London are found to cluster around five themes: The Feeling of Being Disconnected, Contemporary Culture, Pressure, Social Comparison and Transitions Between Life Stages. Disconnection arises from feeling one does not matter, is not understood or is unable to express oneself. Challenges pertaining to social media and materia...
Developing Radical-Digital Interventions to Tackle Loneliness Amongst the Elderly
Humans are social animals and our social relationships are very important for our emotional fulfilment, behavioural adjustment and mental wellbeing (Hughes et al., 2004). Disruption to these relationships can result in an exceedingly unpleasant experience associated with insufficient discharge of the need for human intimacy, called ‘loneliness’ (Weiss, 1973). Loneliness can be more precisely defined as the distressing feeling that results from, and comes with, discrepancies between one’s desired and actual social relationships (Pinquart and Sörensen, 2003). It is often perceived as a problem because it is known to have detrimental effects on a person’s health and quality of life (Lynch, 1977, Cattan et al., 2005, Stuart-Hamilton, 2012). It has long been understood that loneliness is closely associated with ageing. Studies have revealed that people in the age group of 80 years and over are particularly vulnerable to experiencing it (Kaasa, 1998, Demakakos et al., 2006). Global population trends suggests that, “the number of people aged 60 and over will nearly triple in size, increasing from 894 million in 2010 to 2.43 billion in 2050” (Rutherford, 2012 p. 6). According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK’s population is also ageing (2012) in line with this global demographic shift. This means that there will be a record number of older adults living in the UK and, according to Dychtwald and Flower’s ‘Age Wave’ theory of the baby boomers (1989), this phenomenon is likely to exert pressure on families, communities and governments. Therefore it is essential that we start preparing for these challenges in advance. In this paper we have discussed the prevalence of loneliness amongst older adults living in the UK as one such issue. Recent research in the UK indicates that nearly 700,000 people aged over 65 years state that they are often, or always lonely, and that they do not know their neighbours at all (Doughty, 2012). This indicates that with a boom in the elderly population, age-related ‘psychosocial problems’ (Schroots, 1996) such as loneliness are also likely to surge. The belief that loneliness is something that can be manipulated has given rise to an interest in intervention studies amongst researchers (Cattan et al., 2005). However, “just as the range of wellbeing services is extensive, so too is the available literature examining how well they work” (Windle et al., 2011 p. 2). In this paper we have classified interventions aimed at tackling loneliness and social isolation using a ‘pattern recognition’ (Alexander et al., 1977) approach in order to identify gaps in existing research that would benefit from further exploration. We conducted an exhaustive review of literature to develop coding categories and to identify interventions to examine. All interventions were coded using criteria such as incremental versus radical1 approaches to innovation. Norman and Verganti define ‘Incremental’ innovation as “improvements within a given frame of solutions” or “doing better what we already do” and ‘Radical’ innovation as “a change of frame” or “doing what we did not do before” (2012 p. 5). These interventions were also pigeonholed into two mutually exclusive categories as either being Digital or Physical in nature depending upon whether the elderly directly engaged with Internet-based technologies or not respectively. Once all the interventions were logged and coded, they were collectively analysed. Our analysis shows that majority of the interventions discussed in the examined literature can be categorised as being ‘incremental-physical’ in nature. This is similar to a ‘business-as-usual’ (Sharpe and Van der Heijden, 2008) approach to solving the problem of loneliness where befriending services, telephone helplines for elderly, etc. are the most commonly implemented interventions. Also, the literature examined reveals a lack of ‘radical-digital’ interventions that look to involve the elderly in interacting with internet-based technologies and are fundamentally different from conventional approaches to tackling loneliness. This ‘gap’ in research provides an ideal opportunity for researchers to be actively involved in shaping the future of the elderly. Previous Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research has highlighted the difficulty faced by elderly users in interacting with computers and Internet-based technologies (Smither and Braun, 1994, Dyck and Smither, 1996, Zajicek, 2001, Van De Watering, 2005). However, Hirsch et al. have pointed out that the social environment of the elderly is somewhat under-rated in research and mostly cognitive, physical and sensory aspects dominate existing research of this kind (Hirsch et al., 2000). While encouraging the development of ‘radical- digital’ solutions to tackle loneliness amongst the elderly, this paper also makes a strong contribution to HCI research, by providing it with the gravitas of a meaningful (Norman and Verganti, 2014) social context to grow. 1 This is akin to ‘reformist’ vs. ‘radical’ departures in environmental discourses presented in the book “The Politics of the Earth” by J. S. Dryzek (2005). Reformist departures seek solutions within familiar modes of rational management, whereas radical departures argue for a comparatively significant movement away from industrial modes of living and being.
International journal of environmental research and public health, 2017
Loneliness is a common experience among older people that is associated with health risks and negative well-being. As a psychological phenomenon, it has typically been defined in Western research literature as the discrepancy between desired and actual interpersonal relations. In our qualitative study in Hong Kong, we offer insight into ageing and loneliness in an urban environment of the non-Western world and propose to reconceptualise loneliness by exploring older people's experience of alienation at the societal level as an important but often neglected dimension of their loneliness. Thirty-seven community-dwelling, Chinese adults aged 65 and above were interviewed in focus groups and their accounts analysed and interpreted using a phenomenological approach. Findings revealed that focus group participants perceived insufficient care for older people, a growing distance between themselves and society, and their disintegrating identity in society to be primary sources of societ...
Ageing and Society
Loneliness among older people is perceived as a global public health concern, although assumptions that old age is a particularly lonely time for everyone are not accurate. While there is accumulating quantitative and qualitative evidence on the experience and impact of loneliness amongst older adults, there is little exploration of methodological issues that arise in engaging with older adults particularly through research-oriented conversations. The sensitivity and stigma often attached to loneliness means that interviewing research participants presents ethical challenges for researchers navigating complex emotional responses. This paper presents reflections from three research projects that used research interviews to explore accounts of loneliness experienced by older people. The everyday methodological decisions of research teams are often hidden from view, but through a critical examination of reflexive accounts of fieldwork, this paper makes visible the internal and external...