The Health News USA May 8 2018

A study published by Cigna found 46% of American adults report sometimes or always feeling lonely and 47% report feeling left out. Surprisingly, the study has found that loneliness affects younger Americans more than the elderly. Generation Z was found to be the loneliness generation while the Greatest Generation was the least lonely.

According to a new study published by the global health service company Cigna, forty six percent of American adults report sometimes or always feeling lonely and forty seven percent report feeling left out. Surprisingly, the study has found that loneliness affects younger Americans more than the elderly. Also only around half of Americans say they have meaningful in-person social interactions on a daily basis, such as having an extended conversation with a friend or spending time with family members.

Doctor Douglas Nemecek, chief medical officer for Behavioral Health at Cigna told CBS News: “Loneliness is defined as a feeling of being alone or lacking social connectedness.”  For this study, Cigna partnered with market research firm Ipsos and they surveyed more than twenty thousand U.S. adults ages eighteen and older. The researchers measured loneliness using the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a twenty-item questionnaire developed to assess subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation.

Members of Generation Z got a “loneliness score” of forty eight point three and was found to be the loneliness generation of all. These are adults ages between eighteen to twenty two.  Possible loneliness scores range from twenty to eighty, with the national average at forty four. On the other hand, the Greatest Generation, those aged seventy two and over, ranked as the least lonely, with a score of thirty eight point six. Millennials – adults ages twenty three to thirty seven were not that far behind Generation Z with a score of forty five point three followed by Generation X (ages thirty eight to fifty one) with a loneliness score of forty five point one.

But on a positive note, the report discovered that Americans who live with others are less likely to be lonely than those who live alone.