One of the clichés most often associated with Brazilians—among both Latin Americans and outsiders—is their supposed joy for life and an extremely festive and gregarious character. But what happens when Brazilians themselves begin to question those beliefs?
An unprecedented survey by the consultancy Market Analysis, conducted on a representative sample of 1,000 adults, reveals that more than one in three Brazilians (35.2%) feel lonely always or very often. To this figure we can add another 6% who do not know how to express how they feel about it—an absence of opinion that, in the case of negative sensations (such as loneliness and abandonment), is usually interpreted as an indicator of pessimistic emotions. Taken together, this 41% of people who experience affective distress linked to loneliness display a level of vulnerability and fragility incompatible with the cliché of joy, lightness, and existential cordiality traditionally attributed to the Brazilian people.
Social scientists had already questioned the myth of Brazil as a cordial, sociable, and emotionally integrated society on the basis of statistics on social violence or deep inequality and discrimination. Today, another, more subjective and intimate dimension is added to that critique: a profound psychological rupture of the individual, who displays isolation as a moral and existential tear. This is no longer the individual abruptly uprooted from a rural or local context and massified into a lonely crowd, as described by David Riesman at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today’s loneliness is not merely a backdrop of everyday life, but a stigma that constructs a negative, demoralized, and paralyzing identity.
The demography of loneliness
Loneliness is now considered the new global epidemic, especially in the developed North—a situation that has prompted the creation of specific ministries and government offices in countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan, and Spain. Surveys conducted in more than 142 countries by the Gallup Institute in 2023 indicated that, on average, 23% of adults reported feeling involuntarily and uncomfortably lonely the day before. In the United States, some surveys revealed that between 2019 and 2024 the share of people who felt socially abandoned rose from 31% to 53%. In fact, as early as 2023 the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, declared loneliness a plague in his country, and shortly afterward the World Health Organization (WHO) designated it “a threat to global health.”
The globalization of loneliness, which now extends to geographies such as Brazil, is partly explained by the structural logic that predisposes it: the phenomenon tends to worsen first and more intensely among economically peripheral sectors. This reveals a direct relationship between lower income and a greater propensity to feel affectively and socially disconnected from the rest of society. In Brazil, the feeling of loneliness is twice as high (approaching 47%) among those at the bottom of the social pyramid (classes C2/D/E) than among citizens at the top (class A). Economic precariousness is compounded by emotional and social fragility.
The greater exposure to loneliness among specific groups—such as women (11 percentage points more than men) or those with lower levels of education—shows how vulnerabilities overlap. Without a doubt, the overload of tasks borne by women drastically reduces opportunities for social life beyond daily obligations. In the case of those with limited schooling, the early concentration on survival commitments and basic material reproduction eliminates opportunities to diversify social networks and interactions.
Contrary to what some pre-pandemic studies suggested, there are also very significant age gaps. Recent surveys conducted by the nonprofit American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which helps improve quality of life for people over 50, identify those over 45 as one of the groups most affected by social and affective exclusion. In Brazil, however, those who suffer this feeling the most are young people, foreshadowing a bleak future of emotionally disconnected and socially atrophied generations. In terms of loneliness, the gap between those aged 18–24 and those 65 or older is striking—50%: the feeling affects 45% of the youngest versus 30% of the oldest.
What causes the loneliness epidemic?
Sociological analyses help us understand the context, but they do not provide information about the individual narratives people construct to make sense of their situation. These narratives usually explain loneliness in terms of personal failings or circumstances beyond individual control.
As illustrated by the AARP study mentioned above, the weakening of community ties and civic engagement contributes to this uprootedness—these are systemic causes. But we also know that excessive use of information and entertainment technologies, the breakdown of family structures, and material consumerism as a way of expressing oneself and relating to others condition the degree of individual isolation. In Brazil, the causes of loneliness are attributed far more to the system (61% of respondents) than to individual choices (26%).
What does the loneliness epidemic produce?
The feeling of affective exclusion and social abandonment has historically been associated with the deterioration of personal health (shorter life expectancy, neurological damage, higher consumption of drugs and medications, unhealthy habits, depressive and suicidal tendencies, etc.). Some optimists point to certain palliatives as positive byproducts of loneliness, such as adopting a multispecies family with animals and plants at home or curiously exploring virtual companionships offered by artificial intelligence. However, these are not always solutions that lead to effective social integration—leaving aside their financial costs, which are not always affordable for those who tend to come from lower-income classes.
The potential negative effects of loneliness do not end there. Just as Riesman warned in his study of the “lonely crowd,” the massification of loneliness is linked to collective anomie, political radicalization, fanaticism, and generalized distrust. Indeed, the Market Analysis study indicates that Brazilians who feel lonely also feel more insecure, show weaker attachment to democracy, are more pessimistic, admit to having less control over their digital lives and the time they devote to them, and experience connectivity in a conflicted and overwhelming way—as a burden or something beyond their control.
With legions of people who are involuntarily lonely and live their social and affective isolation with discomfort, Brazil plays a significant role in one of the most disconcerting phenomena of our era: the emotional implosion of generations based on sadness and a sense of affective abandonment, rather than a participatory and creative explosion rooted in the aspiration to improve society and the planet.
*Machine translation, proofread by Ricardo Aceves.
Autor
Fabián Echegaray es director de Market Analysis, consultora de opinión pública con sede en Brasil, y actual presidente de WAPOR Latinoamérica, capítulo regional de la asociación mundial de estudios de opinión pública: www.waporlatinoamerica.org.
