Wow: loneliness is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day

Do you remember that old advertisement: ‘...But I don’t smoke’? This campaign ran from 1998 to 2011, so there’s a good chance you’ve seen it at some point. Young people doing all sorts of weird things (like a teenager knocking out his father) and then saying: ‘But I don’t smoke!‘

In 2023, I can very well imagine that if this campaign were to be revived, you’d see people lounging around for days and binge-watching Netflix, but hey: at least I don’t smoke. That would be the worst advertisement ever, because that person should actually say: ‘Hey, I don’t smoke, even though this is just as bad as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.’ At least if you’re doing that binge-watching alone.

According to research, loneliness is just as bad for you as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Strange, right? This research was published in the medical journal PLOS Medicine. Admittedly, not everyone who binge-watches series solo for days is lonely, and that lonely feeling is what’s so detrimental to your health.

Loneliness not only leads to depression but also increases your risk of heart disease and cognitive decline. It also raises the risk of dementia and premature death. Scientists are now even referring to it as a ‘public health issue’ because more and more people are suffering from loneliness.

For example, 25 percent of adults over 65 report feeling socially isolated, which negatively impacts their health. You can imagine that the pandemic has only made this worse: never before have so many people, of all ages, felt extremely lonely and isolated.

Scientists therefore encourage lonely people to take as much action as possible: sign up for a course, sports, or a club, but they also ask people to look around them; is their environment happy?

And no, this is of course not an excuse to keep smoking if you’re not lonely, because it’s still incredibly unhealthy. Sorry.