One powerful action you can take to improve your mental health at any age is strengthening your social connectedness.
Yet, certain life events can leave older adults feeling isolated and lonely, like adult kids moving away, retirement, illness, and the death of a spouse.
Isolation and loneliness can have negative effects on your mental health because social connectedness can be essential to well-being. When social connectedness improves, better well-being often follows.
We’ve partnered with Home Instead to learn more about how socializing can improve mental health in older adults.
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One 2021 research review found that being involved in community groups gave older adult participants a sense of belonging.
Activities that helped them feel greater belonging included volunteer teaching, physical activity groups, and other activities where they were part of a group of people with shared interests, hobbies, or cultural backgrounds.
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The benefit people receive from social interactions depends strongly on their subjective experience and interpretation of the situation.
People benefit most when they feel cared for, feel that they care for others, and when they feel genuinely connected.
Older people tend to especially benefit from participating in physical activities they find fun rather than doing them just because they’re “healthy.”
The better our social connectedness, the better we sleep, a different 2021 review shared.
For example, one 2023 review found that older adults with strong social support systems — friends, family, and spouses — had higher quality sleep than those with less social support.
People may regulate their own emotions and calm themselves down better in the presence of caring friends and loved ones.
People who socialize more tend to better process their stress in their minds and decrease their levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
Socializing is a great exercise for your brain.
One review from 2024 showed that executive function — higher level thinking and reasoning — improved in older people without dementia who had regular social interactions.
In one 2023 study, older people who had longer structured video conversations with researchers several times per week for a year had higher scores in their abilities to think, remember, and reason than those who spoke with researchers for a single short check-in call each week.
MRI scans of the participants’ brains showed greater neural connectivity in attention-related areas, suggesting the video conversations helped reinforce their attentional abilities.
A small 2018 study found that older people who socialized tended to perform better on theory of mind tests than those who didn’t socialize as much.
In other words, socializing may help you retain and develop your knowledge of how others think, understanding that it may differ from your own.
Loneliness clearly links to an increased risk of depression in older people.
On the flip side, social connection seems to have a protective effect against depression.
There’s no one way to socialize. Face-to-face interactions are great, but virtual interactions can help, too.
The interactions don’t have to be deep or prolonged, either. Simply exchanging a few words every day with shopkeepers, classmates, or neighbors may improve well-being.
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- art or hobby groups, like knitting, painting, or woodworking
- leisure and education programs, like group exercise classes
- initiatives involving volunteering
- events at community gathering places, such as a local park, community center, or place of worship
- book clubs
- support groups
Socializing can help improve your mental well-being, and you can do it in many ways.
It’s important to remember that your social connectedness doesn’t just depend on how frequently you engage with other people. It’s also about how connected you feel. That’s why it’s possible to still feel lonely in a room full of people.
As you look for more ways to engage with others, consider participating in activities you can do regularly and that you like doing for their own sake.
Engaging in something you already enjoy will help you meet like-minded people and make genuine connections.
