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Social isolation refers to a lack of contact with society for members of social species. Lack in socializing can cause conflict in a persons life either with friends or family members or with simply just the person themself. Being unable to connect to or experience being close to another person can also lead to mental psychological problems. Socially isolating oneself can mean staying home for days, not talking with friends or acquaintances, and avoiding contact with other people. It can also mean that, even if contact with other people does occur, it is superficial and brief, while more meaningful, extended relationships and especially close intimacy are all missing. For some people, solitude is a way of life which temperamentally suits them and they may not feel lonely even if they have no visitors but for others, it's not as peaceful.

Causes of Social Isolation

Social isolation is potentially both a cause and a symptom of emotional or psychological challenges. Feeling depressed, inadequate, or even anxious can lead us all to isolate. Isolation can then increase the feelings of loneliness and depression, fear of other people, or even make a more negative self-image. It can happen through either social, biological and even genetic factors. It is usually seen in childhood through shyness and the fear of meeting new people. This is said to be a phase that children go through but sometimes, they don't grow out of it. Below are some potential causes of a person becoming socially isolated.

Illness: when someone gets ill they are lacking energy and strength to do things especially interact and socialize with others.

Loss of loved one: when someone loses someone that was close to them, it impacts them in a major way. Especially if it was the only person that had in their life really. The person becomes filled with sadness and depression and often doesn't want to talk or do anything social at all.

Move from home: moving to a new place can be very hard for someone. They move somewhere where they don't know the town or anyone in it. Of course they could go out and meet new people but at first its especially hard and people tend to feel loneliness.

"Bad Hair Day": This is where someone might have a bad hair day or a pimple, illness or some sort of disfigurement, that makes them embarrassed to go out in public, so they hide away in their house which interferes with socializing. (Svensson 2005)

Symptoms of Social Isolation

As stated above, there are multiple causes as to how a person may become socially isolated. There are also many symptoms as well. Avoidance of interpersonal contact of any form is a big sign. This includes job interviews, company dinners and even avoidance of the grocery store because they don't want to speak to the clerk. People who are socially isolated feel like they are constanty inadequite to other people, making social interactions painful and hard for them. People who are socially isolated fear of being shamed or ridiculed in close relationships. They are highly sensitive to cues such of disapproval and rejection. They are also extremely nervous to take social risks. For example, when at a school dance, they are more likely to be sitting at a table talking with friends rather than dancing on the dance floor with other peers who they don't associate with. ("Avoident Personality Disorder")Some other symptoms may include: verbal outpourings, prolonged holding of your hand or arm and different body language such as tightly crossed arms and legs or a defeated demeanor.("Social Isolation - How to Help Patients be Less Lonely ")

Therepy and Social Isolation

Isolation is not a diagnosis, but it is a frequent indicator of another type of illnes, so to speak. People with certain personality disorders, such as schizoid personality, and people with autism, may have no desire to form social relationships. Other personality disorders, like narcissism, borderline personality, and antisocial personality, may alsonlead to isolation. This does not always happen by choice. These disorders impair social skills which can potentially lead other people to isolate from the person with the disorder. Therapy can help deal with the emotional and psychological issues that can lead to isolating behaviors. A therapist can help teach a person social skills, uncover the causes of dysfunction in their relationships and support a person emotionally as he or she builds a support network. (GoodTherepy 2011)

Technology and Social Isolation

In the past, there wasn't internet, facebook, twitter, email, or texting. People would communicate to each other face to face at social events such as parties or simply meeting in a grocery store. People spent more time outside: children playing in the streets with the neighbors children, everyone would just go into town and enjoy the day. But now we have internet, video games, netflix, HBO movie channel, smartphones etc. Instead of children or people going outside and meeting one another they stay inside with their electronic gadgets. They either stay inside and watch movies or t.v shows all day, play video games, or talk online to friends. Socialization doesn't really work if your not talking with someone in person. Even on the phone would be better then talking to someone via a webcam on the computer. No words get exchanged through the computer and so you're still all alone not socializing. (Iliardi, 2009)

Objective vs. Perceived

For humans what is to be addressed is seldom physical isolation, so a distinction between objective isolation with an absolute lack of interaction with others, e.g. due to distance, and a qualitative lack of interaction is called for.

Although objective social isolation can affect perceived social isolation (loneliness), it is perceived isolation that is more closely related to the quality than quantity of social interactions (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009). This is in part because loneliness is influenced by factors unrelated to objective isolation, including genetics, childhood environment, cultural norms, social needs, physical disabilities, and discrepancies between actual and desired relationships. Accordingly, perceived social isolation predicts various outcomes above and beyond what is predicted by objective isolation (see "Loneliness"). Research by Cole and colleagues showed that perceived social isolation is associated with gene expression—specifically, the under-expression of genes bearing anti-inflammatory glucocorticoid response elements and over-expression of genes bearing response elements for pro-inflammatory NF-κB/Rel transcription factors. This finding is paralleled by decreased lymphocyte sensitivity to physiological regulation by the hypothalamic pituitary adrenocortical (HPA) axis in lonely individuals, which together with evidence of increased activity of the HPA axis, suggests the development of glucocorticoid resistance in chronically lonely individuals.

Perspectives

According to James House, when it comes to physical illness, "The magnitude of risk associated with social isolation is comparable with that of cigarette smoking and other major biomedical and psychosocial risk factors. However, our understanding of how and why social isolation is risky for health—or conversely—how and why social ties and relationships are protective of health, still remains quite limited."

The research of Brummett shows that social isolation is unrelated to a wide range of measures of demographic factors, disease severity, physical functioning, and psychological distress. Hence, such factors cannot account for or explain the substantial deleterious effects of social isolation.

However, they also show that isolated individuals report fewer interactions with others, fewer sources of psychological/emotional and instrumental support, and lower levels of religious activity. The obvious question is whether adjusting for one or more of these factors reduces the association of social relationships/isolation with health, and which factors constitute the active ingredient in social isolation producing its deleterious effects on health.

A common sense notion frequently expressed is that social relationships beneficially affect health, not only because of their supportiveness, but also because of the social control that others exercise over a person, especially by encouraging health-promoting behaviors such as adequate sleep, diet, exercise, and compliance with medical regimens or by discouraging health-damaging behaviors such as smoking, excessive eating, alcohol consumption, or drug abuse.

Another hypothesis is that social ties link people with diffuse social networks that facilitate access to a wide range of resources supportive of health, such as medical referral networks, access to others dealing with similar problems, or opportunities to acquire needed resources via jobs, shopping, or financial institutions. These effects are different from support in that they are less a function of the nature of immediate social ties but rather of the ties these immediate ties provide to other people.

Yet another hypothesis proposed by Cacioppo and colleagues is that the isolation of a member of social species has deleterious biological effects. In a 2009 review, Cacioppo and Hawkley noted that the health, life, and genetic legacy of members of social species are threatened when they find themselves on the social perimeter. For instance, social isolation decreases lifespan in the fruit fly; promotes obesity and Type 2 diabetes in mice; exacerbates infarct size and edema and decreases post-stroke survival rate following experimentally induced stroke in mice; promotes activation of the sympatho-adrenomedullary response to an acute immobilization or cold stressor in rats; delays the effects of exercise on adult neurogenesis in rats; decreases open field activity, increases basal cortisol concentrations, and decreases lymphocyte proliferation to mitogens in pigs; increases the 24 hr urinary catecholamines levels and evidence of oxidative stress in the aortic arch of rabbits; and decreases the expression of genes regulating glucocorticoid response in the frontal cortex of piglets. Humans, born to the longest period of abject dependency of any species and dependent on conspecifics across the lifespan to survive and prosper, do not fare well, either, whether they live solitary lives or they simply perceive they live in relative isolation.

Technology As A Factor

As A Mitigator:

With the advent of online social networking communities, there are increasing options to be social. Chat rooms, message boards, and other types of communities are now meeting the need for those who would rather stay home alone to do so yet still develop communities of online friends. The size of the average American’s social circle is smaller today than it was 20 years ago and according to a new study released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the use of cellphones and the Internet is not to blame. (Olsen) Six years ago in 2006, a General Social Survey hypothesized that the average American was feeling more socially isolated because of the rise of the Internet and cellphones. That study reported that from 1985 to 2004, the number of intimate friendships people reported dropped from three to two. (Olsen) However, according to the Pew study done in 2009, only 6 percent of the American population fell into that category of isolation — with no significant change over the last 25 years. (Olsen) The Pew study also found that the circle of close friends for mobile phone users tends to be 12 percent larger than for nonusers and the people who share online photos or instant messages have 9 percent larger social circles than those who don't. However, even with these findings, the Pew study also proved that people still prefer face-to-face communication as the primary means to stay in touch with their friends and family. No matter how many online friends you have, nothing is as close to the real deal as communicating with them verbally.

As An Aggravator

Whether new technologies such as the Internet and mobile phones lead to social isolation is a contested topic among sociologists.

Some argue that new technologies have contributed to a trend towards social isolation in America by replacing local, strong social ties with weaker relationships. Early studies of the internet found that internet use negatively affected interaction with strong social ties; however, more recent studies have not produced such results. Another concern is that these technologies make users more inclined to stay at home and miss out on socializing with neighbors and visiting public places such as parks.

Others believe that these technologies do not lead to social isolation, and may in fact increase interpersonal communication by making it easier to keep in touch with friends and family. A 2009 Pew Research Center report on social isolation and new technologies found that Internet use was associated with larger “core” social networks—strong ties with whom one can discuss important matters. The study also found that internet users are just as likely to know their neighbors and visit public spaces as non-internet users.

See also

• Emotional isolation
• Loneliness
• Solitude
• Stigma management

Further reading

• Cacioppo, J. T.; Hawkley, L. C. (2009). "Perceived social isolation and cognition". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 13 (10): 447–454. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.06.005. PMID 19726219.
• Cole, S. W.; Hawkley, L. C.; Arevalo, J. M.; Sung, C. Y.; Rose, R. M.; Cacioppo, J. T. (2007). "Social regulation of gene expression in human leukocytes". Genome Biology. 8 (9): R189. doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-9-r189. PMC 2375027. PMID 17854483.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
• Elkin, Frederick (1960). The Child and Society: The Process of Socialization. New York: Random House.
• Svensson, Cheryl (2005). "Social Isolation: The need to turn to one another". Meeting the Challenges Quarterly. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)</ref>
• Iliardi, Stephen. "Social Isolation: A Modern Plague". Psychology Today. Retrieved March 8, 2012.</ref>

Category:Social psychology Category:Shyness