"Many people are perfectly happy living alone; it really comes down to personal preference," said Kasley Killam, an expert on social health and social connection and author of The Art and Science of Connection.
Despite widely held beliefs that spending time alone is bad (Ost-Mor et al., 2021; Ren & Evans, 2021), some people actually enjoy being alone (Rokach & Chan, 2021) and do not necessarily feel isolated . In other words, being alone is not the same as being isolated (Queen et al., 2014).
A growing number of studies thus highlight the overall quality of a person's social life as an important determinant in determining whether time spent alone is harmful or beneficial (Pauly et al., 2018; Djundeva et al., 2019 ; Fang et al., 2022; Spending time alone therefore seems acceptable, as long as you don't spend too much time alone.
It also seems important not to view time spent with others and time alone as mutually exclusive. Leary et al. (2003) demonstrated that the amount of time we spend alone and the extent to which we value that time are less strongly correlated with low social interest than with interest in having time for ourselves. In other words, we can enjoy both!
Kasley Killam therefore suggests setting connection goals by talking to at least one friend or family member daily and planning at least one in-person meeting per week to stay socially active within your community.
An article to discover: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/despite-concern-about-older-adults-living-alone-these-seniors-prefer-the-solo-life-i-love-not-having -to-answer-to-anyone-else-103027419.html
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