Despite being touted as a surefire means of adding to one’s risk of dementia, loneliness might not actually be the driver of cognitive decline we believe it to be.
A robust study from the Taylor and Francis group surveyed 10,000 people over the course of seven years and found that folks who reported feelings of loneliness had a slightly poorer memory than those who didn’t — but their memory didn’t worsen any faster than those who said they felt socially connected.
The data was sourced from a long-running study called the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Participant ages ranged from 65 to 94 years old and included people from 12 different European countries like Germany, Spain and Slovenia. Researchers did not include those who already had a history of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, or those who struggled with completing daily tasks at the beginning of the survey.
To test people’s memory, the team asked participants to recall information both immediately and after a pause; in one instance, they tried to remember as many words as they could from a list of 10 in 60 seconds. The highest levels of loneliness were from respondents in Southern European countries, who were typically older, female and in poor health. Still, their cognitive functioning did not decline any faster than those who reported feeling low amounts of loneliness.
In some ways, this finding offers a possible reprieve for those of us struggling to find connection. And, encouragingly, researchers noted that although loneliness was defined as a fixed trait in the study, reality tends to be much different; that is, feelings of loneliness can shift over time.