It’s a busy time of year as calendars fill with holiday parties and family gatherings. For many retirees who live alone, however, the season can underline the loneliness and social isolation they experience throughout the year. With numerous studies documenting the harmful effects of isolation on health, should easy access to meaningful social connections be considered a key benefit of retirement communities?
Social isolation may impact mental and physical health
Loneliness and social isolation are common among older adults, and the problem has worsened over recent years, especially during the pandemic. A January 2023 National Poll on Healthy Aging (NPHA) surveyed 2,563 adults aged 50 to 80 about their social interactions and feelings of isolation. This poll builds on similar surveys conducted in 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2022 by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.
Key findings from the 2023 poll include:
- 34% of respondents said they sometimes or often feel isolated, up from 27% in 2018.
- 37% reported feeling a lack of companionship in the past year, an increase from 34% in 2018.
- 33% said they have social contact with family they don’t live with, friends, or neighbors once a week or less, compared to 28% in 2018.
The poll also revealed a strong association between social isolation and poorer mental and physical health:
- Those rating their mental health as fair or poor were far more likely to report a lack of companionship (73%) than those reporting good to excellent mental health (33%).
- Seventy-seven percent of people with fair or poor mental health said they sometimes or often felt socially isolated, versus 29% of those with better mental health.
- Fifty-six percent of people with fair or poor mental health had infrequent social contact, compared with 30% of those with better mental health.
- People reporting poorer physical health were also more likely to feel socially isolated: 55% said they were sometimes or often isolated, compared with 29% of those with good to excellent physical health.
- The same 55% reported feeling a lack of companionship, versus 33% of those in better physical health.
Which is the causative factor?
These findings raise the question of causation: are poor mental and physical health outcomes driven by loneliness and isolation, or do declining health and reduced mobility lead to isolation? Cross-sectional poll data provide a snapshot and can’t fully untangle this chicken-and-egg problem.
Research by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Ph.D., and others indicates that lacking social connection is linked to earlier mortality, with an impact comparable to established risk factors such as smoking up to 15 cigarettes per day. Other recent studies explore how different components of loneliness and isolation combine to affect health.
Social connection tied to longevity
The U.K. Biobank, which since 2006 has gathered biological and medical information on roughly half a million people aged 40 to 69, provides a large dataset for examining social connection and mortality. Researchers at the University of Glasgow analyzed data from 458,146 participants to study how functional and structural aspects of social connection relate to risk of death.
They measured social connection using two functional indicators (ability to confide in someone close, and often feeling lonely) and three structural indicators (frequency of visits from friends and family, participation in weekly group activities, and living alone).
The study found that lacking any of these five types of social connection was associated with an increased risk of early death from any cause. Notably, people who lived alone and never received visits faced a 39% higher risk of premature death than those visited daily by friends and family.
One of the unexpected benefits of retirement communities?
The Glasgow researchers also reported that group activities with non-close contacts did not reduce mortality risk, whereas spending time with loved ones did. This suggests that emotionally meaningful relationships with friends and family offer stronger protective benefits than casual social interactions.
That difference may reflect the emotional and practical support loved ones provide, or their ability to notice changes in health and encourage timely care. Whatever the mechanism, time spent with close friends and family appears linked to lower risk of early mortality.
Given these findings, access to close social ties could be considered a valuable advantage of retirement communities. When residents settle into these communities, neighbors often become close friends; in some cases, friends even move to the same 55-plus community together. Those connections create convenient social opportunities and a dependable support network for everyday life and during health challenges. Even when mobility declines, the proximity of friends within a retirement community can be important for mental and physical wellbeing.
When you weigh this access to meaningful social-emotional connections—and the potential boost to longevity—alongside other benefits of retirement communities such as low- or no-maintenance living, amenities like pools and dining, and sometimes on-site care services, it’s clear why many people find them attractive.