In Defense of Spending Time Alone
Not all Solitude is Isolation
According to the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey data, between 2014 and 2019 the amount of time that Americans spend alone went up by more than it did during the pandemic, while time spent with friends went down.1 Economist Bryce Ward drew attention to this fact in a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, in which he pointed out that during that same period, time spent on social media and on other forms of digital infotainment went up considerably.2
But in the course of making some serious points about the dangers of social isolation, atomization, overuse of digital devices, and anomie, he said something that struck me as premised on somewhat shocking assumptions.
“It is too soon to know the long-term consequences of this shift, but it seems safe to assume that the decline of our social lives is a worrisome development. Spending less time with friends is not a best practice by most standards, and it might contribute to other troubling trends – isolation, worsening mental health (particularly among adolescents), rising aggressive behavior and violent crime. Americans rate activities as more meaningful and joyful when friends are present. Friends and social connections… also boost health and lead to better economic outcomes” (emphasis mine).
Ward goes on to exhort us to spend more time with friends, because we “will feel better create memories, boost (our) health,” and learn new things.
Let me stipulate that I largely agree with that. I share Ward’s concern about digital atomization, his worry about the decline of friendship for Americans of all ages (but particularly for men and for Millennials and members of Gen Z). I also share the similar concerns raised by various commentators and social critics over the past decade about young people (and people of all ages) spending too much time alone on screens, spending less time outdoors and physically active and in the physical presence of other people, and experiencing greater rates of depression and anxiety and anomie.3
But, at a certain point, the overwhelming tide of handwringing articles about loneliness begin to traffic in stereotypes and create false impressions. I agree with Ward’s conclusions, and with his emphasis on friendship and spending time together with other people (in the flesh). But the words, “it seems safe to assume,” jumped out at me, because I’m not sure that it is safe.
While I’m not at all sure that Ward is implying that spending (more) time alone is necessarily and always worrisome (and worse that spending time with others), there are those who will take away exactly that message. And when we reach of critical mass of handwringing about loneliness, it becomes necessary to defend spending time alone,4 even when one agrees with most of the claims about isolation, screen time, and loneliness.5
The underlying assumption – the assumption I take issue with – implied by Ward’s piece, is that the bias should be on the side of spending time in groups and against spending time alone. In other words, that the burden of proof should be on the individual to justify being alone, rather than on the group to give individuals a reason to join. Left out is any consideration of whether or not we should take both solitude and togetherness on a case-by-case basis.
I’m not the first to see this assumption in Ward’s piece (though I came to my analysis independently), nor am I the first to feel the need to (partially) rebut it. Not because I believe human beings should aspire to some kind of radical autarky, shorn of all attachments and loyalties and interdependencies, but because I believe that distinctions matter and that (in some cases) solitude can be entirely defensible, justifiable, and good.
Spending Time with Other People isn’t Always Good:
What I take exception to, is the idea – an idea I believe is implied by the statement that it is safe to assume that spending more time alone isn’t good, coupled with the suggestion that more time alone might contribute to aggressive behavior and violent crime6 – that spending time alone is selfish, or promotes selfishness or other bad traits.7
This idea is a cousin to the idea that the odd person out in any group is the selfish one – a laughable idea when you realize that that person probably doesn’t have any desire to impose himself or herself on the rest of the group, whereas multiple members of the group likely are doing exactly that to him or her. It’s silly to suggest, for instance, that the employee on a diet is the one being selfish when the rest of the team are pestering him or her to break that diet for no other reason that that they are personally made uncomfortable by the fact that he or she isn’t eating whatever they are eating.8
Just because a man is alone doesn’t mean he is thinking about himself. In fact, many people are less self-conscious when alone (especially out in nature) than they are when they’re around other people.
Just because a woman works for herself doesn’t mean she is any more or less selfish than someone who works for another person. Moreover, plenty of people in groups display shocking levels of selfish behavior – from students protesting their teachers in order to avoid doing their assignments, to mobs looting stores to service their own greed, to congressional committees in which each member asks essentially the same question in order to get a sound bite for social media, to charitable groups that treat their beneficiaries as means to the end of their own personal redemption (rather than as ends in and of themselves).
By no means is all groupishness selfish. Nor, in any of the examples I give, am I implying that in all (or even most) cases people act selfishly when in certain groups. Most charitable groups no doubt treat their beneficiaries with dignity, and not all politicians are self-centered.
But selfishness isn’t merely a private matter, and “just spend more time with others” isn’t a panacea for selfish behavior. Some groups encourage or even promote self-indulgent behavior, whereas solitude can lend itself to behavior that is anything but self-indulgent.
But there is more to say here. After all, isolation can lead to selfishness. It can lead to many bad behaviors and attitudes. But it is not the root of all such behaviors. Moreover, there are some social ills that are encouraged far more by groupishness than by solitude.
We don’t have time to go into most of those. However, I feel the need to focus on a couple, for the purpose of rebutting false assumptions.
Some have suggested that increasing levels of isolation in America contribute to increasingly extreme partisanship (and hatred for opposing partisans). And yet, the “law of group polarization” would seem to suggest the exact opposite conclusion. Left to their own devices, people may or may not become more extreme in their beliefs. But when individuals are in discussion with a community of likeminded people, they become progressively more extreme over time – each individual feeds off of the others and by the end of the conversation (if it goes long enough), every member of the group is more extreme than the most extreme member of the group was at the beginning of the conversation. This is how mobs work themselves into a frenzy. This is how pogroms and lynchings begin.
Spending time with people who hold different beliefs from your own can be the antidote to polarization. But “spending more time with people” full stop, could add fuel to the fire of partisan antipathy, because it could mean spending more time with your tribe.
Let’s return to violence and aggression for a moment. Given the number of mass shooters who were lone, isolated individuals, it seems natural to wonder whether increased isolation might contribute to violence and aggression. Yet the vast majority of violent crime isn’t committed by lone individuals. Some of it is domestic violence, committed by lovers or members of the same family. Some of it is fueled by drunkenness in groups – from barfights to postgame brawls.
Much of it is committed by gangs and other criminal enterprises. Gangs are often characterized by deep bonds of mutual loyalty, mutual respect, friendship, and familial ties. But they’re also characterized by hatred for their rivals, brutal antisocial violence, and outright turf warfare. For gang members, the problem isn’t exactly spending too much time alone. In fact, if they were alone, many members might come to regret their choices of association.
Moreover, even many mass shooters don’t fit the profile of “lone, isolated individual.” The Columbine shooters were close friends. The D.C. sniper attacks were perpetrated by a pair of men. The Paris nightclub attackers were ISIS terrorists. Dan and Ron Lafferty were brothers.9 And given how very few people ever become mass shooters, it can be extremely difficult to point to any particular factor (including atomization) and say, “this will lead to more mass shootings.”
Finally, there is the idea that spending time with other people is inherently more virtuous than spending time alone. Naturally, there are virtuous actions and activities that can only take place in congregation with other people (or with at least one other person). But that doesn’t mean that all group activity is inherently more virtuous. Even setting aside criminal gangs and mobs and tyranny-of-the-majority scenarios and witch-burning and partisan tribes, we can find numerous examples where people in groups behave in deplorable, licentious, debauched, and depraved ways. Peer pressure and social ostracization, for instance, almost always occur in situations where a group of people turn upon a single individual or a smaller number of people. In fact, in a group, there are often greater temptations for doing wrong, which can be harder to resist than when a person is alone.
Time Spent Alone Can Be Good:
Working from home has its disadvantages. And collaboration is an important part of many jobs. And yet, many remote workers found that they accomplished more alone in their home offices than they did at the office. Moreover, there are plenty of jobs and activities that require spending long periods of time alone. Of course, very few people can work effectively forever completely alone. And, yet, that is not what we are talking about here. What we are talking about is whether or not there are benefits to spending some time alone. We don’t have to have a society of individuals working entirely alone in order to see that many workers benefit from working alone some of the time.
Most obviously, writing is a solitary activity. While many related activities (editing, brainstorming, working through ideas, learning, revising, etc.) do sometimes benefit from collaboration and working with others, most writing requires solitude or at least freedom from distraction (i.e., two writers can sit together and work quietly, but if they talk too much they won’t be able to write much). In the act of putting thought into written word, writing is a private activity.
Related to that, reading can be done in groups. Families especially know the benefits of reading aloud. And yet, the majority of reading that is done on this planet is done alone (again, even if people are sitting silently in one another’s presence). It is very difficult to read much without some solitariness – even solitariness in the presence of others.
Some religious activities are solitary ones. Since I am a Christian, I won’t speak to other faith traditions. For Christians, some of our worship necessarily takes place in a church, in congregation with other believers. We are called to be part of the body of Christ (i.e., the church). But we are also instructed to pray alone, silently or aloud. In Matthew, Chapter 6, we are told to pray in our rooms with the door shut, in order to be alone with the Father (and in order to avoid virtue signaling). Many Christians take time out of every day to read Scripture, offer prayers of thanksgiving or intercession or forgiveness, or sing hymns.
Spending long periods of time completely alone in the wilderness would be dangerous, frightening, and even miserable (at least for the vast majority of people).10 And yet, walking alone in the woods, or down a country lane, or by a peaceful lake is among the highest pleasures in life. Even very extroverted people can find it relaxing, restorative, and moving.
To this could be added other activities, such as skiing, cycling, surfing, climbing, or swimming. Each of these activities can be conducive to achieving a flow state (something that is difficult to achieve in any activity that isn’t solitary). A flow state is the opposite of self-absorption, because it is the state in which you lose yourself and supposedly forget that you are alive.
Finally, there is long-distance running – a solitary activity that I have personal experience with, and a sport that is perhaps lonelier than almost any other. I don’t know if the phrase “the loneliness of the long-distance runner” originated with Arthur Sillitoe’s story by the same name, but the phrase captures something of the experience of being a runner.
There is the solitariness of a solo run, the long miles alone, the calm that descends upon you after an hour of moving along in your own company. But that phrase doesn’t merely capture the phenomenon of running alone. It also refers to the simple fact that difficult running – in a race or a hard workout or on a particularly cold or hot day – brings you face to face with the fact that every runner suffers alone. There is a strange solidarity in this, that because you have confronted a similar agony to your teammates and your opponents you feel a kinship with them. But, in a race, even when two close friends are matching pace, every runner carries his or her own burden. By definition, nobody can feel what you are feeling and you can’t feel what they are, even if you are both feeling something similar.
This stark experience – of fighting your own battle amongst many others fighting their own similar battle – creates surprisingly strong bonds. In an earlier essay, “Sameness is the Wrong Approach,” I explored the way an incredibly individualized (and sometimes individualistic) sport like running could also be a prime candidate for a model of social relations based on recognition of difference and separateness. My premise was that if we acknowledge the fact that every other person has his or her own needs and desires (rather than pretending they are just like us), we can build bonds of mutual admiration and respect – on teams, in friendships, in families, and within institutions.
That point seems a good segue to my conclusion.
In the End:
Spending time alone can be a good thing. It can be a necessary thing for a lot of people. Introverted people – but also people who are not introverts – need some time alone.
Not all time alone is good. In fact, much of it is not. But neither is all time in the company of other people good. In fact, much of it is not.
Which means that we should take both time spent alone, and time spent with others, on a case-by-case basis. There are times when we are, or must be, alone – even times when it is good, and healthy, and right for us to be so. And there are times when we are, and must be, with others – times when it is good, and healthy, and right to be with one or more other people.
Humans are social creatures, not solitary creatures. But we aren’t simply social creatures. Relationships are an important part of our identities, but we have selves, separate and apart from our relationships with other people.11
There are sins that are individual in nature, temptations that people are more susceptible to when they are alone, bad things that are more often done in solitude or by solitary persons. But there are also sins that are communal in nature, evils that are more common in groups, terrible things that are almost exclusively done by people in concord with other people. In fact, there are great evils that only happen when people put aside their individual self-interest and lose themselves in a crowd.
Neither being alone, nor being in a group, is simply good or bad.
I defend spending time alone not because I believe that human beings should spend all their time alone, but because it is important to remember that both spending time with other people, and spending time alone can be important parts of a flourishing life. When combatting the “epidemic of loneliness,” in America today, we must take care not to lose the forest for the trees.
Coda: One Possibility
I tend to avoid predictions about the future, because nobody actually knows what is going to happen. Which makes me neither an optimist, nor a pessimist. That said, I am aware of one optimistic possibility that what is going on right now isn’t an inevitable technological dystopia of atomization, but rather a somewhat disruptive transition in our social relations.
It’s been suggested that part of what is going on is a change in the nature of work, and a decrease in the emphasis of the workplace as being the center of American life. Which opens up the possibility that what we are seeing is a temporary decrease in togetherness, in order to transition from a period in which togetherness primarily meant spending time at the office, to a period in which togetherness means more time in nonwork institutions, gatherings, and informal associations.
I have no idea as to whether that is likely. However, it would be profoundly good. The decline of associational life in America has been occurring for several decades, and a reverse would be healthy. Moreover, while many Americans did find friendship at the office in past decades, many did not. And a transition away from a period that served only one type of person, to a period in which people remember that society is more than simply enterprises (businesses) and governments, would be a good thing. Indeed, replace the time spent alone on screens with time spent at the office, and the rise in loneliness between 2014 and 2022 would look remarkably similar to a rise in a different kind of loneliness between, say, 1960 and 2007.
I don’t know whether that’s simply a function of the fact that the period in question is more than twice as long as length of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s noteworthy either way.
Indicating that technology is (perhaps) one important driver of this phenomenon.
Often mentioned in this conversation is the epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths (affecting Americans of all ages, but primarily middle-aged and older adults). It should be noted here that there are many complex factors involved (over-prescription of opioids, misinformation about the addictiveness of painkillers, chronic pain, the rise of fentanyl, etc.), making it unlikely that social isolation is the primary driver.
Someone may accuse me here of being a contrarian, or of making an opposing case for the sake of opposing majority opinion. Nothing could be further from the truth. I defend spending time alone, because it is possible for multiple things to be true at the same time: that too much isolation is bad, that too much screen time can be harmful, but that not all time alone is bad, and that some solitude is actually healthy and good and desirable. When dealing with the rise of atomization and loneliness, we must not lose sight of the fact that not all independence is atomization and not all solitude is loneliness. In fact, many people who feel terribly lonely spend most of their time in the company of other people.
As I do.
A dubious suggestion. If anything, the statistics on violent crime in America and Europe over the past fifty years point in the opposite direction. More on this later.
Not to say that violence or aggression is primarily driven by selfishness. Selfishness isn’t the root of all vices, because just as there is more than one virtue, there is more than one vice.
By all means, a dieting employee can selfishly impose himself or herself on the rest of the group. But if that person isn’t insisting on being the center of attention, but is rather content to let the others enjoy themselves, that person isn’t selfish merely for being different than everyone else.
They weren’t mass shooters, but they were murderers. Moreover, they came from a big family and their other brothers were involved in their radicalization.
Not even Thoreau advocated for isolating oneself deep in the wilderness. It is the rare individual who survives in such a state.
Acknowledging that we have individual selves is sometimes construed as being the same as promoting or encouraging selfishness. This is, on the whole, a rather silly argument.