2 ms·

FTA (and I paraphrase) Old people are alone because their friends (also old) are dead. Old people are alone but they aren't lonely. ... bit of spin there

• yawaramin 6y ago
  Was just thinking that the article carefully talks about 'loneliness' and skirts around 'happiness'. It points to another article[1] that claims to show that being alone doesn't necessarily mean being lonely--but that article fails to make a case for that: - First of all, in absolute numbers it shows that a lot of older people in developed countries are lonely. It may not be a majority of people but that's kinda like saying 'don't worry, covid has a mortality rate of just 1%'. - Then the article tries to show that people in these countries self-report that they have social support--that they have someone who can help them if they get in trouble--but it fails to show the breakdown of those who have social support by age, which is kind of the critical question here: do older people have social support? - Then, the article tries to show that there's not much correlation between being alone and being lonely--but it again fails to show whether this is true for older people specifically, or just for the aggregate sample. - Then it talks about 'aggregate' statistics again, instead of focusing on older people. There seems to be quite a lot of bending over backwards trying to convince us that older people are not lonely, but no cogent argument. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/lonely-not-alone https://ourworldindata.org/lonely-not-alone