Study in Atlantic Canadian city looks into stigma around friendlessness, loneliness

Loneliness has been declared an epidemic that affects both emotional well-being and physical health, yet it remains largely unrecognized.

The World Health Organization estimates loneliness affects around 10 per cent of young people and 25 per cent of the elderly.

A new study conducted by researchers at Dalhousie University and St. Francis Xavier University suggests those without close relations have a sometimes positive, yet conflicted experience with friendlessness.

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Dr. Laura Eramian, an associate professor in Dalhousie’s Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, led the project that included people in an Atlantic Canadian city who claim to have few or no friends.

The study found friendless people both lament and celebrate their disconnection.

"What was so striking was that being so friendless wasn't just a sad story of loneliness, which is not to say that people don't truly suffer as a result of this. Many of them do and nothing we found contradicts that," said Eramian during an interview with CTV Atlantic's Todd Battis on Tuesday.

"But on the other hand, we heard this countervailing and really quite compelling set of stories about how friendlessness affords them opportunities to practise other kinds of valued North American traits, like self-reliance and freedom, autonomy and independence. So, there really was this kind of fascinating diversity in the kinds of meanings people attributed to their lack of friends."

All the participants, which included 21 people aged 18-to-75, expressed their friendlessness made them feel looked down on and framed as outcasts by popular images, the medical system, therapists and social workers who see them as unhealthy or at risk.

Eramian says the study was conducted during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, notes most people said that didn't change their friendship lives because they were already so disconnected.

"One person actually said the pandemic improved their friendships because they got laid off and had more time to see them," she said. "So, there is a diversity there and I think that's one of the things, the diversity I suppose that we'd really like to foreground around these findings."

Eramian said the participants were aware there is a stigma attached to friendlessness in Euro-American society.

"And it was something that they, to varying degrees, did feel that it was important for them to respond to either to express concern that there was some truth to those stigmas or perhaps to contest them as well."

As far as those who participated in the study, Eramian says there was a variety of reasons why they have few to no friends.

"Some people we spoke to were really quite socially isolated, whereas others had really quite rich family lives or professional lives and for them, part of attributing meaning to the fact of their few or no friends was that they saw themselves as people who had prioritized other kinds of connections of life goals, be that family or careers."

To recruit participants, the researchers put up posters in places like libraries, cafes, gyms and grocery stores in neighbourhoods across a range of income levels. A recruitment ad was also posted on social media accounts and websites.

The study says most interviewees were single and lived alone. Some had rich family lives, some has romantic partners or roommates, and others were almost entirely socially isolated.

Each interview was semi-structured and lasted about one hour.