R&D PROJECTS

Project Overview

Hard-to-see loneliness

Social isolation and loneliness have a negative impact on mental and physical health, which makes taking measures to address loneliness and the risk of falling into loneliness (loneliness risk) an urgent issue. However, there are aspects of loneliness that people who experience it have difficulty expressing due to feelings of shame. This makes it extremely difficult to identify people experiencing or are prone to loneliness in society or a group. Lifestyle changes associated with COVID-19 are compounding the problem of isolation and loneliness. The marked decrease in opportunities to interact with others has created more than just a situation in which isolation and loneliness are more likely to occur; it has also made them harder to see.

Visualizing loneliness risk at the individual and organizational/community levels and developing primary prevention measures

The risk of isolation and loneliness increases at the start of a new phase in life. In this project, we will obtain data on new university students and young people newly entering the workforce through online surveys and experiments, fMRI experiments, social media, and wearable devices. We will then add information on the groups they belong to and geographical information to this data and conduct integrated analyses to understand the mechanisms of isolation and loneliness arising in new phases of life and identify the characteristics of people and environments that tend to produce loneliness. From there, we will use the acquired data to quantify the degree to which specific individuals experience loneliness, and at the same time, predict future loneliness risk. We will also quantify loneliness risk for organizations and communities in the same way. We will use these figures as the basis for improving teaching formats and other aspects of the participating universities. We will also utilize them to prevent and intervene in the manifestation of isolation and loneliness among working adults in collaboration with health and medical institutions in each region. Looking to the future, we plan to inspect and evaluate the particulars of the interventions made to identify truly effective measures, compile those measures into a collection of best practices, and share them with society as a whole, with the aim of creating a society that does not produce isolation and loneliness.

Q&A

Please tell us more about the social vision this project aims to achieve for the primary prevention of social isolation and loneliness.

Through this project, we envision a healthy society in which isolation and loneliness are unlikely to occur and which is capable of addressing social isolation and loneliness not only at the individual level but also at the organizational level. We believe it will be essential to build a society that prevents loneliness to achieve this. Through this project, we will strive to identify groups at high risk of loneliness and effective measures for preventing isolation and loneliness. We will also endeavor to develop effective measures and systems for proactive action to prevent loneliness in high-risk groups.

What are the biggest challenges (bottlenecks) in achieving the social vision above?

Sharing with the public the effective measures to be identified in the project will be essential for realizing the social vision described above. Consequently, the greatest challenge will be spreading the awareness of the isolation and loneliness problem and effective measures to organizations. We intend to share a sense of crisis concerning preventing isolation and loneliness in society by actively disseminating the outcomes of our research. We also hope to promote the implementation of measures by organizations that need them by establishing a system through which project members can facilitate implementation with advice and support.

Participating/Cooperating Institutions

• Kobe University, Kyoto University, Hiroshima University, Chubu University, Kindai University, Otemon Gakuin University, Osaka University of Comprehensive Children Education, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Nishikyushu University, Hiroshima Bunkyo University, University of Toyama, Osaka University, Okayama University, La Trobe University, Kyoto University of the Arts, and others.

Report

• FY2021 Research and Development Report (Japanese) (PDF: 535KB)