Exploring social isolation across the generations

Researchers have used information from BCS70, and four other studies, which each follow a different generation, to try to understand when and why people might be at risk of social isolation during their lifetime.

Like loneliness, social isolation can have a negative impact on people’s physical and mental health. While loneliness is about how someone may feel when their social network doesn’t meet their needs, social isolation is objective. It can be measured by the number and frequency of social connections and interactions people have — for example how often someone meets up with their friends, or how many people they live with.

In a recent study, a team of researchers at UCL compared your experiences with those of people both older and younger than you, to discover whether people are leading more isolated lives today and whether there are critical timepoints when people are at most risk of social isolation.

What we asked you

At different times we’ve asked you about your household size, if you had a partner and if you were seeing friends and family regularly. We’ve also asked about your work history and time spent in education and whether you did any volunteering, belonged to any clubs or did any sports. All this information has helped build a picture of your social interactions at different stages of life.

Comparable information has been collected from participants in four other similar studies following generations of people born in 1946, 1958, 1989-90 and 2000-02. Using all five studies together, the UCL research team were able to look at patterns of social isolation over time and through life.

What the research found

Looking at changing trends, the researchers found that living alone had become more common among young adults over the years. Among your generation, 9% of people were living on their own in their mid-20s. Twenty years later, at a similar age, 17% of people lived alone.

Across the different generations, men were more likely to be living alone in early-to-midlife and women were more likely to live alone in later life, probably due to outliving their partners.

The researchers looked at people’s wider social circles. Among all ages and generations, it was unusual for people to report having no regular contact with friends and family. On the whole, it was a little more common among men. However, during your 30s, women of your generation were more likely to experience this lack of regular social contact compared to men – perhaps due to childcare responsibilities and the combined pressures of juggling work and home life.

The researchers found that when you were teenagers, you were more likely to belong to clubs and community groups than younger generations when they were a similar age. On the other hand, volunteering was more common for the youngest generation at this age than it had been for you at that time. But volunteering has become increasingly common for your generation as you’ve got older.

Researchers looked at whether people were in work or studying as both can create opportunities for social interaction. Over generations, it had become less common for women to be neither working nor in education during early adulthood. This suggests a growing trend in delays to starting a family.

Why this research matters

We already know that social isolation can be detrimental to people’s health and wellbeing, this latest research highlights the complexity of social isolation and how multiple factors contribute to it. By understanding the nature and timing of these factors, strategies can be developed to reduce social isolation and its negative impact.

Read the full research paper

Lifecourse trajectories and cross-generational trends in social isolation: Findings from five successive British birth cohort studies by Rosie Mansfield, Morag Henderson, Marcus Richards, George B. Ploubidis and Praveetha Patalay was published in Advances in Life Course Research in June 2024.