Understanding Loneliness and Solitude in Midlife: A Closer Look at the Data
People often report arriving, somewhere around their forties, at a distinction between being alone and being lonely. It tends to get described as a stage: something you reach once the noise of early adulthood settles down. However, this intuitive notion of a midlife loneliness stage is not supported by comprehensive lifespan data.
It is important to note that this description reflects a common pattern observed in personal experiences rather than a clinical diagnosis or universal truth.
What the Lifespan Data Actually Shows
In 2020, Marcus Mund and colleagues published a meta-analysis in Personality and Social Psychology Review that pooled 75 longitudinal studies from Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, covering 83,679 individuals. Their analysis examined two distinct aspects: whether average loneliness increases or decreases with age and whether individuals maintain their relative loneliness levels over time.
The findings revealed that average loneliness decreases during childhood and then remains essentially stable from adolescence through to the oldest age groups. Contrary to popular belief, there is no midlife spike in loneliness. Instead, the rank order of loneliness among individuals—that is, who is lonelier relative to others—remains quite stable and behaves similarly to personality traits. This stability follows an inverted U-shape across the lifespan: it is lowest in youth and peaks in midlife.
To clarify, this does not mean loneliness itself rises and then falls with age. Rather, people’s relative positions in loneliness compared to their peers are more consistent in midlife than at younger ages. Importantly, these pooled averages mask the individual fluctuations that matter most to each person.
The stable average loneliness level challenges the idea of a “threshold” moment around age forty. If such a universal shift occurred, we would expect to see a change in the average scores across the large data set, but we do not.
Where the Change Actually Appears: Between Generations
While midlife loneliness does not manifest as a universal stage in the lifespan, it shows significant variation when comparing birth cohorts—or generations—within the same age range.
Frank Infurna of Arizona State University, together with colleagues from Humboldt University Berlin and Brandeis University, published a detailed analysis in American Psychologist (March 2024), available in full via PubMed Central. This study harmonized three longitudinal surveys: the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, and SHARE, covering eleven European countries plus Israel. Their sample included 59,030 participants aged between 45 and 65, enabling a direct comparison of loneliness across birth cohorts at the same life stage.
The results showed that midlife loneliness in the United States has been steadily elevated for Baby Boomers and Generation X compared with the Silent Generation. Moreover, U.S. levels of loneliness were consistently higher than those in peer European nations. Within Europe, trends were not uniform: England and Mediterranean countries experienced increases in midlife loneliness among later-born cohorts, while Continental and Nordic Europe saw stable or slightly declining levels.
Loneliness was measured using the three-item scale developed by Hughes and colleagues, which asks participants how often they feel a lack of companionship, feel left out, and feel isolated. Notably, this scale avoids using the word “loneliness” directly, a deliberate choice to reduce stigma and cultural reporting biases. This reminds us that loneliness research depends heavily on self-reporting, which can be influenced by cultural norms and expectations.
The Press Release and the Paper Do Not Quite Agree
The American Psychological Association’s press release emphasized a widening gap, noting that younger cohorts in the U.S. report more loneliness than older ones—a finding that accurately reflects generational differences within the country.
However, the paper itself added nuance by highlighting that while American midlife loneliness remains high, middle-aged adults in England and Mediterranean Europe have increased their loneliness levels over time and are “not that far behind the U.S.” This means that although one gap (between generations in the U.S.) widened, another (between the U.S. and parts of Europe) narrowed—an important distinction absent from the press release.
The authors suggest that these cross-national differences may be influenced by cultural norms, socioeconomic conditions, and the robustness of social safety nets. Factors such as higher residential mobility, weaker family ties, job insecurity, income inequality, and less comprehensive family leave, unemployment protection, and childcare provisions in the U.S. are proposed as possible contributors. However, these interpretations are speculative, as the study design does not directly test these causal relationships. The authors call for “more mechanism-oriented research to identify reasons.”
They frame the broader phenomenon less as an epidemic—a sudden, widespread outbreak—and more as an endemic condition, meaning a persistent, structural feature of certain societies. Endemic issues often respond better to systemic and policy-level changes rather than individual interventions.
What the Solitude Experiments Measured
Since chronological age does not explain the alone-versus-lonely distinction, experimental research points to variables related to personal choice and motivation. The study by Infurna and colleagues also acknowledges the value of exploring “related, yet distinct constructs such as solitude,” which can reflect chosen aloneness.
Thuy-vy Nguyen, Richard Ryan, and Edward Deci conducted four studies published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 2018 examining what time alone actually does. Their research found that solitude produces a deactivation effect, reducing both positive and negative high-arousal feelings. In one diary study following 173 undergraduates over two weeks, autonomous motivation for solitude was linked to less loneliness and greater calmness, although it did not change the overall calming effect on emotional arousal.
A later 2022 PLOS ONE study by Nguyen, Netta Weinstein, and Ryan found that introversion did not predict preference or enjoyment of solitude, while dispositional autonomy—a sense of self-directedness—did predict motivation for solitude but was unrelated to preference.
These findings highlight that the key variable is how much control a person has over their time alone, rather than inherent temperament or age. Solitude that is chosen feels different and is experienced differently than solitude imposed by external circumstances such as relocation, job loss, bereavement, or social isolation.
This explanation may be less poetic than developmental theories focused on the forties but is more readily testable. Midlife is often when individuals gain—or realize they lack—control over their own time, making it a pivotal period for experiencing solitude positively or negatively.
What None of This Establishes
It is crucial to recognize the limitations of these studies. The Mund meta-analysis pooled loneliness measures from different instruments and cultures, which reduces precision. Its stability estimates focus on one-year intervals and cannot predict individual loneliness decades later.
The Infurna analysis covers only midlife ages (45-65) and mostly high-income countries. Data for the Silent Generation exists only for the U.S. and England, and Generation X data is more limited, though consistent with broader trends. The loneliness measure captures the isolation aspect but not relational or collective facets, which may have different trajectories.
The solitude experiments were conducted on undergraduates in short laboratory sessions and diary studies, leaving a gap in understanding how solitude functions in midlife or later life.
Ultimately, the authors conclude that we do not yet know why some nations exhibit elevated midlife loneliness and others do not. The variation lies more between countries and birth cohorts than within the arc of an individual’s life.
Disclosure. The topic for this article was suggested by Jeanette Brown, who writes and teaches on identity and purpose in later-life transitions. Jeanette Brown works with Brown Brothers Media, which publishes Silicon Canals, and the link that follows is to her own site. No payment was made or received for this coverage. Her Retirement Thrive Score, a free twelve-question survey that returns a personalised reading and is aimed at people planning later life, is at thrive.jeanettebrown.net.
Featured image is representative and does not depict any person or place discussed in the research. Photo by Alexander Zvir via Pexels.
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