Is the West really lonely?
"Man is by nature a social animal" - Aristotle
Conventional thinking brands loneliness a 21st-century epidemic that the west uniquely suffers.
The rise of social media, combined with the pandemic, and pressures of capitalism, forces the atomised individuals of the West to seclude themselves further from society.
It has become a point of criticism that Western culture is steeped in loneliness, causing further crises such as declining birth rates. It is often argued that a more family-orientated culture such as those of the Global South would prevent this.
Yet the polling by Gallup and Meta titled the ‘Global State of Social Connections Report (2023)’ contradicts this.
The headline takeaway is that the countries with the highest rates of self-reported loneliness are Lesotho (58%), the Philippines (57%), Uganda (53%), Botswana (50%), and Afghanistan (50%).
Out of the 29 countries where at least one-third of the population reports feeling very or fairly lonely, 22 are in Africa, 4 are in the Middle East, and 3 are in South Asia.
The typically decried ‘lonely’ countries, such as the UK, US, Ireland, and Germany, rank very low. Germany is the fourth least lonely country in the world, and the UK is tied for the 31st least lonely, alongside Australia, Belgium, and Canada.
To say this runs completely counter to conventional thinking is an understatement. Yet the report received very little coverage at the time, with the researchers not even acknowledging how unique their results are.
There are a couple of immediately obvious factors causing loneliness in these countries.
Firstly, they are all developing nations. The richest among them is Gabon, with a GDP per capita of $8,820 as of 2023. The average per capita GDP is roughly $2,326, with the loneliest nation, Lesotho, having a GDP per capita of only $970.
Secondly, demographics: another of the findings was that the age group of 19–29 was by far the most lonely, with a 10% difference in reported loneliness between this cohort and those aged 65+ with regards to being very lonely. The median age of the 29 countries above is 20.5 years old.
Thirdly, health: some of the poorest countries in the world have some of the worst healthcare outcomes. The consequence is that many people are left to suffer with diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, and AIDS—diseases that are either curable or treatable in the Western world. Anyone can attest to how lonely it is to suffer in pain.
Lastly, culture: People look at appealing videos of families connecting and enjoying themselves, but the reality is that in many of the tight-knit, hierarchical cultures present in the countries above, it can be quite suffocating.
Nigerian culture has been described as “a culture that crushes curiosity, discourages critical thinking, and produces adults who struggle to assert themselves.” Lesotho and Zimbabwe, have extremely high suicide rates, while male-dominated countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Chad have oppressive cultures that cause large disparities between women and men.
There is a problem at the heart of the discussion around loneliness, it’s quite difficult to assert that society has become measurably lonelier as there is little data pre-2000 on feelings of loneliness.
There has certainly been a collapse in the time spent with traditional social networks and post-pandemic there was a slight increase in self-reported feelings of loneliness from 2020 to 2021.
However, I don’t think it’s true that the West is irredeemably lonely, nor that loneliness has dramatically increased.
The data gathered by Gallup actually shows that the West has lower levels of loneliness than the global south, which I would attribute to economic growth sparked by an individualist culture.
This observation aligns with life pre-economic growth. Consider the time spent washing clothes: in 1920, the average housewife spent 11.5 hours a week washing clothes; this has fallen to 1.5 hours. Maintaining a household was long, difficult, and often lonely work. The rise in home appliances has made life drastically easier, and I would contend, less lonely.
After my previous article, I was asked why I think we are lonely.
It’s a difficult question, one that philosophers have meditated on for many years. So, it’s a bit egotistical to think I know why, but I believe there are two key elements to it.
Firstly, I think loneliness is partly philosophical. Humans are born alone and die alone; loneliness is part of our condition. Religion is an attempt to search for meaning in a meaningless world. Without it, we are each left to attempt to reconcile this meaningless existence, which for some causes loneliness and despair.
Secondly, fundamentally, people are lazy. We profess that we are lonely and want connection but aren’t willing to put in the work. This is because building community is hard, time-consuming, and ultimately vulnerable work. This is most obvious in male friendships.
A frequent observation about male loneliness is that male friendships are surface-level, meaning men place all their emotional burden on their partners, or if they do not have one, simply bottle their feelings up.
This isn’t because men are unemotional or because male friendships are not strong enough to communicate vulnerability; rather, it’s that they don’t overcome that hurdle.
In all likelihood, most men are capable of communicating their feelings and validating others’ feelings; it just requires someone to — in their eyes — sacrifice social capital by being vulnerable.
This is ultimately because moving a relationship beyond simple surface-level platitudes to deeper levels requires vulnerability. It requires someone to take the risk of being rejected or invalidated, which humans are averse to.
If you truly think about it, how many people know you on a deep level? How many people can you talk to about anything and everything? For many men, that number is zero.
Loneliness has plagued humanity since the beginning. Philosophers, commentators, and writers relentlessly speak about it. But some of the writing is clearly wrong.
Many focus on the plague of individualism, the relentless movement of modern man, or they blame democracy. Philosophers such as Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book Democracy in America, blame the individualist tendency of modern man to “willingly abandon society at large to itself.” But such observations feel reductive; they ignore societies that feel suffocating by binding those within them to a strict hierarchy.
Some would say those strict hierarchies provide structure and purpose to one’s life. But I don’t think anyone would contend that the life of a Muslim woman in Afghanistan, who now faces some of the most restricted freedoms in the world, is less lonely than the life she had prior to the Taliban’s takeover in the 1980s, let alone the takeover in 2021, as a result of her newly found ‘structure’ and ‘purpose’.
As with everything, loneliness isn’t that simple. The results of the Gallup-Meta research are confusing, to say the least.
Whilst I think they certainly show a different picture from the often-presumed loneliness of the West and paint a picture of low economic growth and hierarchical cultures being significant causes of loneliness. This isn’t the entire picture, as there are a number of countries that fit this mould yet have low levels of loneliness.
For example, the country with the highest self-reported ‘not at all lonely’ rate is Vietnam, a country with a GDP per capita of $4,282, a hierarchical culture, an average age of 32, and health issues such as pollution. Yet, its population is among the least lonely in the world.
Loneliness is something that will continue to confuse philosophers and haunt policymakers until we can truly understand what causes it and how to fix it.