Spending time ALONE is good for you: Scientists say solitude can help relieve pressure of modern life
- Researchers monitored the social habits of 178 people over a three-week period
- They found that the longer people spent in solitude, the lower their stress levels were
Spending time alone can be good for you and reduce stress.
Loneliness is often seen as lonely, but it eases the pressures of modern life and can help people feel freer, a study suggests.
Researchers asked 178 people to keep a three-week diary in which they tracked how many hours they spent alone each day without interacting face-to-face with other people or talking to them digitally, such as through social media or e-mail.
The more time people spent in solitude on a given day, the lower they rated their feelings of stress.
The research volunteers were asked three questions about how pressured they felt to behave in a certain way, how free they felt to be themselves and how much they felt in control of what happened during the day .
Researchers asked 178 people to keep a three-week diary in which they tracked how many hours they spent alone each day, without interacting face-to-face with other people or talking to them digitally, such as through social media or email.
They answered these questions much more positively the more time they spent alone.
Loneliness isn't all a good thing, as people generally feel lonelier on days when they spend more time alone than usual.
But this wasn't the case for people who regularly spent more time alone.
Researchers therefore conclude that loneliness only feels unpleasant when you are alone, even though you actually don't want that.
It means that many people can happily spend hours alone without any effect on their well-being.
Professor Netta Weinstein, who led the research at the University of Reading, said: 'Loneliness can be extremely relaxing because you are your own captain.
“There's no boss who wants a task completed, and no conversations that come with the pressure to be entertaining and congenial.
'Of course being with other people is very rewarding, but it can also take its toll, so a degree of solitude can help balance the time we spend socializing and boost wellbeing. '
The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, aimed to find out whether there is a 'tipping point': a certain number of alone hours per day that can damage well-being.
But to their surprise, researchers found no such thing.
People were asked daily to what extent they agreed with the sentence 'today I feel stressed'.
Their stress levels were generally lower the longer they spent alone.
People rated their loneliness higher and rated their day as less good when they spent more time alone.
However, what mattered was whether people chose to be alone, which researchers worked out based on the extent to which they agreed with statements about enjoying and appreciating solitude, and finding it important.
When people chose to be alone, the amount of loneliness no longer affected their enjoyment of the day, and feelings of loneliness were significantly reduced.
People who spent the most time alone did not experience the same loneliness and reduced satisfaction with their day as the average in the study.
The researchers say: 'This finding contrasts with the common stereotype that people who spend more time alone are 'lonely people'.'
They conclude that being alone for only a short time appeared to be bad for well-being, and that “a person spent an unusual and greater proportion of time in solitude than was normal for him or her.”