Historically, living together has been a response to economic and security needs rather than a virtue. However, history cannot fully explain the isolation experienced by the current generation.
A study published in Population and Development Review, based on 279 census samples from 90 countries, reveals that people in societies with a high level of human development spend a substantially higher proportion of their lives living alone. This lends weight to the notion that what we referred to in a previous article as “withdrawal” is simply what people are buying when, for the first time in history, they can afford privacy. However, this purchase comes at a price, whether or not we perceive it as such.
In the report by the Commission on Social Connection, the World Health Organisation distinguishes between loneliness, which is a painful sensation caused by the gap between the relationships we desire and those we actually have, and social isolation, which is an objective situation in which we have few connections, regardless of how we feel about them. The Commission estimates that, globally, one in six people experience loneliness, which is associated with approximately 871,000 deaths annually. Furthermore, statistics consistently show that having a limited number of social connections is associated with health risks, regardless of whether or not we perceive this as a lack.
Loneliness = a painful feeling caused by the gap between the relationships we desire and those we actually have.
Social isolation = the objective situation of having few connections, regardless of how we feel about them.
The most comprehensive review of the topic was a meta-analysis coordinated by Julianne Holt-Lunstad which brought together 70 longitudinal studies and over 3.4 million participants. After adjusting for common confounding factors, the analysis revealed that social isolation was associated with a 29 per cent higher risk of mortality, perceived loneliness with a 26 per cent higher risk, and living alone with a 32 per cent higher risk. Surprisingly, the authors did not identify any significant differences between objective and subjective measures—in other words, having few social connections is associated with a risk comparable to that of feeling a lack of social connections. Furthermore, the effect was stronger among people under 65.
A British study published in PNAS suggests that the objective measure is more robust to statistical adjustments than the subjective measure. Andrew Steptoe and his colleagues followed 6,500 adults for over seven years, measuring social isolation separately through contact with family and friends, civic participation, and self-reported loneliness. After adjustment, isolation remained associated with mortality, while loneliness did not. People with few social connections died earlier, regardless of whether or not they felt lonely.
However, these findings need to be interpreted with caution. Some people genuinely prefer solitude and perceive it not as a deprivation, but as a desirable state. To tell these people that they are deceiving themselves would be both untrue and unfair. Nevertheless, their subjective experience (“This is how I like it”) and the results of the studies (“A reduced number of social connections is associated with health risks”) relate to different factors.
This pattern is well known in medicine. High blood pressure, for example, is one of the conditions dubbed the “silent killer”, as it can damage blood vessels without producing any noticeable symptoms. The absence of symptoms does not offer any protection; it merely means that there is no warning.
Feeling fine on your own does not contradict the data. It answers a different question.
Like snow
Prosperity only explains why we were able to choose withdrawal; it does not explain why we continue to choose it with such consistency, even after the cost has become apparent.
A plausible explanation comes from an unexpected direction. In 2004, Jean Twenge, Liqing Zhang, and Charles Im compiled the results of almost 25,000 tests measuring the respondents’ locus of control. This psychological concept describes the extent to which a person believes they can control or influence what happens to them in life. The results showed that, over time, locus of control had shifted significantly towards the external. The average student in 2002 had a more external locus of control than 80 per cent of students in the early 1960s; in other words, they felt that they had less control over their lives.
The study measures belief rather than desire, and the leap from one to the other remains hypothetical rather than proven. One might rightly argue that people who believe they have no control over anything should become passive rather than try to compensate. However, superimposing this trend onto the previously described trends suggests a possible common structure, and such structures are worth investigating when seemingly unrelated phenomena move in the same direction. If the sense that we are in control of major life choices such as career, home, and institutions has steadily eroded over six decades, it is plausible that the need for control will not disappear but shift towards controllable factors such as who enters the room, who we answer to and when, what we read and what we ignore, and where and when the working day begins and ends.
The German sociologist Hartmut Rosa has coined the term Unverfügbarkeit to describe the impossibility of having full control over something. In The Uncontrollability of the World, he argues that the desire to make the world predictable and accessible is one of the driving forces of modernity. However, resonance—meaning those moments when we feel truly connected to something or someone—requires a partner who cannot be fully controlled, who has a voice of their own, and who may even reject us. That which we completely control ceases to touch our souls. The sociologist invokes the image of snow melting when held in the palm of the hand.
Therefore, the conclusion might be that people do not simply wish to be alone but that, as members of an increasingly uncertain society, they have systematically chosen the predictable over something beneficial. Isolation is merely a side effect of this choice.
The life that does not belong to us
How and why has the predictable come to seem like the only available form of security? We cannot answer this question satisfactorily until we clarify just how much of our lives actually belongs to us. On this subject, modernity oscillates between two extremes: it either makes us masters of everything, leaving us with a commensurate level of anxiety, or it reduces us to products of external forces, relieving us of all responsibility. Christianity proposes a distinction that is deeper and more viable than these two polarities.
The future does not belong to us. In the Epistle of James (4:13–15), the entrepreneur who announces his business plans for the coming year is not rebuked for planning, but for speaking of the coming year as if it were his personal property. The same idea is expressed in Proverbs 16:9: humans may plan their way, but their steps are determined by someone else. We are responsible for planning, but not for the outcome.
On the other hand, the present is entrusted to us unreservedly. In the Gospel parables, the Greek word for steward is “oikonomos“, meaning “steward of a house that does not belong to him”. The only requirement placed upon him is that he be found faithful (1 Corinthians 4:2).
In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30), it is the servant who buries the money that is rebuked. He gives fear as the reason, and his solution seems flawless from a risk perspective. Once buried, the talent cannot be lost.
Developed societies seem to have specialised in “burying talents” by choosing the option with the lowest risk. The fact that this choice can be observed statistically suggests that it is not merely a matter of temperament, but rather generalised caution. This leads us to ask what we are trying to protect by consistently choosing the safest option, regardless of the cost.
The figures illustrate this withdrawal from several angles
In 2023, 18% of American adults living with others reported eating all of their meals alone the previous day, marking a 50% increase compared to 2003. Among 25–34-year-olds, this behaviour increased by over 180% over two decades.
Between 2003 and 2022, Americans spent an additional 1 hour and 39 minutes at home per day, alongside an increase in free time spent alone.
Internationally, household sizes have shrunk by an average of around 0.5 people per decade, while in highly developed societies, the proportion of people living alone has increased.
Work has also partially withdrawn from shared spaces. In 20 OECD countries, for example, the proportion of job advertisements offering the option to work from home increased from around 2.5 per cent to 11 per cent between January 2020 and January 2023. A study of the MIT email network also found that the shift to working entirely from home resulted in a 6.2 per cent decrease in weak ties and a 38.7 per cent decrease in new weak ties formed during the working day.
In the United States, the proportion of men aged 18–24 who reported no sexual activity in the previous year increased from 18.9 per cent between 2000 and 2002 to 30.9 per cent between 2016 and 2018.
If we choose to protect ourselves from what we cannot control, it is worth remembering that the future has never been in anyone’s hands, in any era. The generations before us had fewer tools with which to mask this reality. We, on the other hand, have built ourselves a whole arsenal of tools that help us to forget it.
The alternative may resemble fatalistic resignation, but it is not. In fact, it is the only form of freedom that does not require you to master something that was never yours in the first place.