Written by Zoe Reed
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Many of us may experience loneliness and social isolation from time to time, but have you ever wondered what impact this might be having on your health?
Many people may use the terms loneliness and social isolation interchangeably, however, while the two are related, they are actually distinct concepts. Loneliness is the feeling that your social relationships are falling short of what you desire. Whereas social isolation describes low frequency of social interactions and contacts one has. You could think of it as loneliness being about the quality of social relationships, whereas social isolation is about the quantity. Someone can feel lonely despite having many friends and someone can have few social contacts without feeling lonely – the two do not always occur together and therefore, they may impact health in different ways.
We know from previous research that both loneliness and social isolation are linked to poor health (Park et al, 2020), making them important public health issues. However, we still do not know whether they actually contribute to poorer health outcomes or if they might be a consequence of poorer health and whether loneliness and social isolation have distinct effects on health.
To explore these questions, some colleagues and I at the University of Bristol, along with researchers at Amsterdam UMC, the University of Oxford and the University of Manchester, worked with Nesta (a research and innovation foundation who funded the study). We wanted to better understand the impact of both loneliness and social isolation on a range of health outcomes, broadly grouped into 1) mental health and wellbeing, 2) physical health and 3) general health (such as having multiple health conditions).
In our study, which was published in Nature Communications (Hilliard et al, 2026), we combined several statistical approaches each with its own strengths and limitations. By using multiple different approaches, we can build a better understanding and draw more robust conclusions about how loneliness, social isolation and health are related. By comparing findings across these methods, we were able to build a more complete picture.
We analysed data from the UK Biobank (https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/), which contains health, lifestyle and biological information from around 500,000 people across the UK, who are predominantly middle- aged and older adults. We also used information from genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which examine how genes are related to traits such as loneliness, social isolation and health outcomes.
What did we find?
Overall, we found evidence that both loneliness and social isolation are linked to poorer mental health and lower wellbeing. We also found evidence that loneliness is linked to poorer general health. However, we did not find clear evidence that either was linked to specific physical health conditions. It's important to interpret this finding carefully. The absence of clear evidence doesn't necessarily mean these relationships don't exist. Like all studies, ours has limitations, and further research is needed to better understand these links.
Why does this matter?
Our findings reinforce the importance of addressing loneliness and social isolation as public health issues. Supporting people who feel lonely or socially isolated could have benefits that extend beyond improving social connections. It may also help improve mental health, wellbeing and overall health.
What's next?
Our study takes an important step to improve our understanding of how loneliness and social isolation influence health, but many important questions remain. Future research should explore these relationships earlier in life as our study focused on middle-aged and older adults. It should also examine chronic loneliness, as we only examined loneliness and social isolation at one time point. By improving our understanding further of these relationships, this will help to develop interventions that support people experiencing loneliness and social isolation.
References
- Park, C. et al. The Effect of Loneliness on Distinct Health Outcomes: A Comprehensive Review and Meta-Analysis. Psychiatry Research 294, 113514 (2020).
- Hilliard, D.D. et al. Investigating relationships between loneliness, social isolation and health. Nat Commun 17, 5840 (2026).