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So lonely
If you’ve spent any time reading about the science of happiness and longevity, you’ve probably run across the Harvard Grant Study — the 88-year research project that has followed the lives of hundreds of men beginning in 1938, including future President John F. Kennedy and Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.
The clearest message from all those decades of data, according to Robert Waldinger, the Harvard psychiatrist who has been running the study since 2003: “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”
Waldinger was specific about what loneliness does to the brain.
People who are more isolated than they want to be, he said, find that their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner, and they live shorter lives.
His TED talk on the subject has now been viewed nearly 28 million times on YouTube alone — which tells you something about how many people are thinking about this question.
Now a new study — a large one, tracking more than 10,000 people across Europe for seven years — has added a wrinkle to that story.
10,217 adults
Researchers tracked 10,217 adults between the ages of 65 and 94 across 12 European countries for seven years, using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe — one of the largest long-running studies of older adults on the continent.
Participants answered questions about how often they felt a lack of companionship, left out, or isolated. Their memory was tested regularly via word recall tasks.
People who reported higher levels of loneliness at the start of the study did score lower on memory tests — confirming what Waldinger and the Grant Study have long suggested. Loneliness and weaker memory go together.
Over the seven years of follow-up, however, lonely people’s memories declined at essentially the same rate as everyone else’s.
“The finding that loneliness significantly impacted memory, but not the speed of decline in memory over time was a surprising outcome,” said lead author Luis Carlos Venegas-Sanabria, from the Universidad del Rosario in Colombia. “It suggests that loneliness may play a more prominent role in the initial state of memory than in its progressive decline.”
The damage is real
This study doesn’t contradict Waldinger or the Grant Study. Loneliness is still associated with worse cognitive performance. The damage appears to be real.
If loneliness primarily affects where your memory starts rather than how fast it declines, however, then the most important window for intervention may be earlier than previously understood — before the deficit is established, not after.
The researchers suggest that routine screening for loneliness could become part of cognitive health assessments for older adults.
Given that the Grant Study found more than one in five Americans report feeling lonely at any given time, that’s not a small population to consider.
A few more points to consider
The study has real limitations. Loneliness was treated as fixed — measured at the start and assumed to stay constant — when anyone who has lived through a move, a divorce, a retirement, or a pandemic knows that feelings of isolation can shift dramatically over time.
The study was also conducted entirely in Europe. Cultural norms around social connection vary considerably from those in the United States.
Also, the researchers are appropriately cautious about what their findings mean for dementia risk specifically. This was a study of healthy older adults, not clinical populations — so the conclusions don’t extend cleanly to people already experiencing cognitive decline.
Still, Waldinger’s core message from the Grant Study holds: Relationships matter, probably more than many people act like they do.
If anything, this newer research adds urgency because if loneliness shapes where your memory starts, the time to do something about it isn’t when you notice the decline.
It’s well before that.
Other things worth knowing …
Axios: The White House believes it’s close to an agreement with Iran to end the war. Among other provisions, the deal would involve Iran committing to a moratorium on nuclear enrichment, the U.S. agreeing to lift its sanctions and release billions in frozen Iranian funds, and both sides lifting restrictions around transit through the Strait of Hormuz.
Politico: President Trump’s Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court to let it intervene in Trump’s appeal of the $83.3 million jury verdict in a defamation lawsuit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll. DOJ wants to substitute the federal government itself for Trump as the defendant, which would end Carroll’s case, because the United States can’t be sued for defamation.
MSNOW: The FBI has launched a criminal leak investigation focusing on an Atlantic magazine journalist who wrote a deeply unflattering account last month of Director Kash Patel’s work habits. The journalist, Sarah Fitzpatrick, cited two dozen anonymous sources in a detailed story reporting that Patel’s alcohol consumption and erratic behavior had caused deep concern among FBI officials.
Miami Herald: Palm Beach County approved a trademark deal with one of Donald Trump’s family companies to rename the county’s airport after the president. The agreement gives Trump veto power over how his image and biographical information is used in marketing materials.
New Scientist: Gamblers have bet $9 million on how many people will be infected with measles in the U.S. on prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket – and there is some evidence that the predictions are accurate enough to be useful for modeling its spread.
Hollywood Reporter: Ted Turner, the media visionary who forever altered the news business by founding CNN and helped introduce Americans to pay TV by creating cable channels like TNT, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network, has died. He was 87.
AP: WKRP isn’t dead — as of Monday, it’s living on the air in Cincinnati. The call letters from the fictional radio station featured in a CBS sitcom were adopted by a trio of real “adult hits” stations in time for Monday’s morning drive, and co-owner Jeff Ziesmann described listeners as “stoked.” The show “WKRP in Cincinnati” ran from 1978 to 1982 and starred Loni Anderson, Howard Hesseman, Tim Reid and Richard Sanders.
Thanks for reading. Photo by Lukas Rychvalsky on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.
Eye catching title - loneliness in relationships happen as well, that is another factor. Hence, "good" relationships keep us happier. Great article!
..."and they live shorter lives"...as if anyone knows how long a person is supposed to live. The incidences of losing loved ones, divorce, losing employment, moving, losing friends, retirement and a thousand other life altering events are part of natural life for 99% of us. So what? There is nothing wrong with being sad or depressed or listless when experiencing these events. There is no one-size-fits-all when dealing with these things...every one is relatively different.
..."The researchers suggest that routine screening for loneliness could become part of cognitive health assessments for older adults."...well here we go again. Exactly how are you going to rate loneliness on a scale? It is stupid and this will end up being another conduit for psychiatrists (or similar) to prescribe more damaging drugs that FIX nothing.
It's not that people are living alone or that they are lonely. It's how they view that existence that makes the difference. And there is a difference in how they can view themselves as there is nothing wrong with living alone or at times feeling lonely or alone. Endlessly dwelling upon loneliness is the very prescription that enforces its psychological existence in the mind.