[Topic of the Times: On "Loneliness"] Akihide Inaba: "Loneliness and Isolation" from the Perspective of Family Sociology

2021/06/23

In sociology, isolation is generally defined as a physical lack of interpersonal relationships, while loneliness is viewed as a subjective lack of interpersonal relationships. While isolation is an objective concept, loneliness is a subjective one.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, opportunities for social contact were restricted, and many people spent more time at home. According to the results of the "Survey on Changes in Lifestyle Attitudes and Behavior under the Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic" conducted by the Cabinet Office in May and December 2020 among approximately 10,000 people, more than 70% of households with children responded that "time spent with family increased," and about 26% responded that "the husband's housework and childcare increased." As a result, about half of the total respondents stated that they "became more aware of the importance of family." For these people, feelings of loneliness are not apparent. This is because family is at the very center of the social lives of people raising children, and the pandemic concentrated family relationships rather than diluting them. However, it must be noted as a separate issue that the number of cases of domestic violence and child abuse has increased compared to before due to the prolonged time spent at home.

So, what about young people who have not yet formed their own families? Even if interpersonal contact is restricted, many young people maintain interpersonal connections through social media, so an isolated situation does not necessarily arise immediately. However, it must be noted that interactions on social media overwhelmingly occur on top of existing interpersonal relationships, and their effectiveness tends to be limited to those who already have stable relationships. For those at a stage of forming new relationships—namely, new students in high schools and universities—the reduction in face-to-face contact means they lack opportunities to form real-world interpersonal relationships, and it can be expected that isolation and resulting feelings of loneliness will increase. In a survey of approximately 11,000 people conducted by the National Federation of University Co-operative Associations in October-November 2020, about 35% of university freshmen cited "not being able to make friends" as a concern in their daily lives, and those who said their "student life is fulfilling" stood at 56.5%, the lowest figure since the survey began. In this way, for people at a stage where they must build new relationships, the restriction of interpersonal contact due to the pandemic is thought to be creating feelings of loneliness, making them the group of greatest concern. At our university, for example, it seems difficult for new members of seminars to make close friends within the group because they lack opportunities for face-to-face contact. In my own seminar, interaction across grade levels has seemed extremely thin over the past two years.

On the other hand, for the elderly who are not very familiar with social media, a decrease in interpersonal contact almost certainly leads to a state of isolation. In the aforementioned Cabinet Office survey, less than 20% of those aged 60 and over engaged in so-called online interactions "at least once a week," and more than half had no experience using them. Traditionally, the group for whom social isolation has been most concerning is unmarried men. Because men tend to lead career-centered life courses, they often have no friends in their local community prior to retirement. Consequently, their psychological dependence on their spouse becomes significant. In contrast, women often have stable interpersonal relationships in the community (such as "mama-tomo" or mom-friends) and tend to have more active kinship ties than men, so their dependence on their spouse is not as great as that of men. For this reason, the death of a spouse signifies social isolation for men, but not necessarily for women. Furthermore, among the unmarried, those who are widowed or divorced often have children, and the relationship with their children often becomes a precious one. In contrast, those who have never married rarely have children, so their family relationships are often limited to siblings.

However, the problem of social isolation among elderly never-married men has been pointed out independently of the pandemic. If interpersonal relationships were already thin to begin with, the impact of the pandemic is actually relatively small. Thinking about it this way, one cannot help but say that the problem of isolation and loneliness caused by the pandemic was greatest among the youth. People who seek to form new social relationships and "should have been able to gain more social connections" had their interpersonal contact limited by the pandemic, leading to an increase in loneliness as they experience an unprecedented level of isolation. This problem is predicted to be particularly large for those experiencing a new life that involves living alone away from their families for the first time. While such experiences of loneliness involve non-negligible problems such as deteriorating mental health in the short term, it cannot be said that there are no positive aspects in the long term, such as promoting personal growth. I intend to keep a close watch on these effects moving forward.