Is Isolation Really Devastating for Older People?
I was watching a YouTube video recently when the presenter made a statement that stopped me cold.
He said: Isolation is devastating for older people.
Just like that. No qualifiers. No distinctions. No nuance. A broad declaration handed out as though it applied equally to every person over sixty.
And I found myself pushing back.
Not because I think human connection isn’t important. It is. Not because I think loneliness is healthy. It isn’t. But because we’ve developed a habit of treating very different experiences as if they’re the same thing.
Loneliness is not the same thing as solitude. Living alone is not the same thing as being disconnected. Enjoying your own company is not the same thing as being abandoned.
Those distinctions matter. A lot.
For example, I spend a tremendous amount of time alone. I write alone. I paint alone. I drink my morning coffee alone. There are stretches of time when I don’t leave my apartment for days.
To some people, that sounds alarming.
To me, it sounds normal.
And yet — am I isolated?
I talk with my daughter for two hours. I have coffee on the patio with friends. I meet a neighbor for bourbon on a beautiful evening. I host live discussions. I receive messages from readers asking for my perspective. I spend my days in conversation with thousands of people through my writing.
Am I alone? Frequently.
Am I disconnected? Not at all.
Those are two entirely different conditions.
The older I get, the more suspicious I become of broad statements about what older people supposedly need. Older people need to socialize. Older people need to stay busy.
Do we? Or do some of us?
Because my grandmother lived to ninety years old without the internet, without Zoom, without social media, without a carefully curated network of activities. She wasn’t sitting around worrying about whether she had enough engagement opportunities.
She was living her life.
And that’s what gets lost in these conversations.
Human beings are not wired identically. Some people are energized by crowds. Some people are exhausted by them. Some people need daily interaction. Some people need daily solitude. Some people are lonely in a house full of relatives. Some people are perfectly content spending an afternoon alone with a book, a garden, or their thoughts.
The danger isn’t solitude. The danger is assuming everyone should need the same things.
I’ve spent much of my life believing there was something wrong with me because I enjoyed being alone. That the preference itself was evidence of a problem — something to fix, something to overcome, something to apologize for in a culture that treats extroversion as health and solitude as symptom.
Now I wonder if there was never anything wrong at all.
Maybe I was simply wired differently. Maybe what looked like isolation to someone else looked like peace to me.
The real question isn’t how much social interaction an older person needs. The real question is what kind of life allows this particular person to feel connected, engaged, and alive.
Those answers are going to be different for every one of us.
And I think that’s a much more interesting conversation than another sweeping declaration about what all older people supposedly need.
Because we’re not a category.
We’re people.Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.
If this piece landed somewhere real for you — if you recognized yourself in the Tuesday solitude, in the years of wondering what was wrong, in the quiet relief of realizing nothing ever was — I’d love for you to join us.
The Breakthrough Circle gathers every Tuesday on Zoom. No agenda. No performance. Just women who are done apologizing for the life that actually fits them.
For a limited time I’m offering 20% off an annual membership — because I know times are tight and I want the women who need this room to be able to get into it.
Come as you are. The door is open.
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