Ever feel disconnected and alone on the weekends even though you are well surrounded by acquaintances and friends during the week? Imagine on a Friday night, you finally get to enjoy some tranquility alone. As you watch groups of people cheerfully walk past your window dressed up for gatherings, you realise you don’t know who to spend your weekend with. You might be experiencing a form of loneliness and you are definitely not alone.
Contrary to common belief, loneliness is not merely about lacking social connections, it is the subjective perception of feeling one’s social needs are not met in quantity and quality (Tiwari, 2013). In order words, it is not about what social connections you have, but more importantly how these interactions make you feel. The way we actively seeking for social bonds not only serves the evolutionary purpose of survival and reproduction, more recent research suggests that social relationships play a vital role in stress management and health (Taylor & Gonzaga, 2006). However, often college students are immersed by superficial connections (like class acquaintances) without being able to further cultivate them into deeper bonds. In fact, 25% college students reported experiencing isolation, 22% reported feeling left out, and 19% reported feeling lack of companionship; A report by Active Minds and Timely Care published in 2024, indicates 64.7% of college students reported felling only (2024). Loneliness is the composition of emotional disconnect, social isolation, lack of meaningful relationship, and sense of belonging. Since the construct of implicit loneliness has not yet been defined by existing literature, in the context of this paper it is defined as: an subconscious form of loneliness which symptoms of loneliness are manifested through behavioural, emotional, and cognitive domains without clear connection to social deficit.
Implicit loneliness can be more concerning than explicit loneliness, because one is not able to tackle the problem without knowing its presence. Unfortunately, although the characteristics of implicit loneliness may be more subtle, they are a strong predictor of mental distress—such as depression, elevated stress, anxiety, suicide ideation, and self-harm (Yanguas et al., 2018). Loneliness is also a major predictor of poor health outcomes, including elevated risk of heart disease (29%) and stroke (32%), hypertension, development of type 2 diabetes, and weaker immune response to infectious diseases (Office of the Surgeon General [OSG]). Because of the profound health consequences of loneliness on mental and physical health, both acute and chronic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is currently recognising it as a global public health priority (2024). Given college students are more prone to feelings of loneliness, and being implicit makes it more challenging to identify, more research on the effective identification and intervention to alleviate negative health outcomes of implicit loneliness among college students is urgently needed.
References
Active Minds and Timely Care. (2024). Loneliness, resilience, and mental health. (). https://go.timelycare.com/l/916941/2024-05-17/t52m2/916941/1715969310eIvUsRm1/
Report_Call_For_Campus_Action_AM_TC.pdf
Office of the Surgeon General, (. (2023). Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation: The U.S. surgeon general’s advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community. (). https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-
advisory.pdf
Taylor, S. E., & Gonzaga, G. C. (2006). Evolution, relationships, and health: The social shaping hypothesis. Evolution and social psychology (1st ed., pp. 211–236). Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203782965-10
Tiwari, S. C. (2013). Loneliness: A disease? Indian Journal of Psychiatry/Indian Journal of
Psychiatry, 55(4), 320–322. https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5545.120536
World Health Organization. (2024, Social isolation and loneliness. World Health Organization.https://www.who.int/teams/social-determinants-of-health/demographic-change-and-healthy-ageing/social-isolation-and-loneliness
Yanguas, J., Pinazo-Henandis, S., & Tarazona-Santabalbina, F. J. (2018). The complexity of loneliness. Acta Bio-Medica : Atenei Parmensis, 89(2), 302–314. https://doi.org/10.23750/abm.v89i2.7404