FRIENDSHIP
Adaptive mechanisms that influence socialization and solitude in everyday life
In today's increasingly digital world, Opportunities for connection have expanded, yet we also feel lonelier. In Spain, nearly one in four adults reports experiencing frequent loneliness, which highlights the urgent need to develop scalable public health responses based on scientific evidence.
Description of the project
Despite the extensive existing research , effective interventions against loneliness remain limited, in part because loneliness arises from more subtle—yet significantly impactful—deficits in the quality and balance of people’s social and solitary experiences, as well as their time spent alone, in their daily lives. Everyday moments of social interaction and solitude—which are unique to each person and depend on their individual status —are often overshadowed by infrequent but highly significant life events.
The * project : FRIENDSHIP* addresses a fundamental gap in our understanding of how to reduce loneliness by shifting the focus from quantity to the daily balance between social and solitary experiences, their contextual appropriateness, and their quality; at the same time, it examines how recent films construct cultural narratives about loneliness and how these influence people’s interpretation and emotional experience of their social lives.
AMISTAD also contextualizes these dynamics by analyzing the role moderator of digital media use, physical environments, individual differences, and cultural representations.
Thus, AMISTAD develops a comprehensive “framework ” that lays the instructions for effective interventions to address loneliness, focusing on the quality and balance of social experiences and experiences of loneliness.
Project's goals
To jointly investigate social interaction and solitude as interdependent processes that influence both momentary and cumulative loneliness.
Examine how physical environments and digital media influence the quality, appropriateness, and balance of these experiences.
To analyze individual differences in the balance between social interaction and solitude, especially among
vulnerable groups.
To explore how recent films represent and shape the cultural imagination of loneliness.
Team
Principal Investigators
Members
Netta Weinstein
University of Reading
Doctoral students
Andrea Tisalema
Hernán Carvallo
Marcela Zúñiga
Funder
