Interact With Others
Stay socially engaged with friends, family, and community. Connection is one of the most powerful protectors of health and happiness in later life.
Connection is good medicine
Strong social ties protect health as much as many medical treatments. People with regular, meaningful contact tend to live longer, recover better from illness, and keep their memory sharper. Connection also lifts mood and gives the days a sense of purpose.
The reverse is just as real. Loneliness and isolation carry a health risk on a par with smoking, and they have become common in later life as friends move, retire, or pass away. The encouraging part is that connection can be rebuilt at any age, often with small and steady steps.
What counts as connection: a phone call, a shared meal, a class, a faith group, a volunteer role, or a friendly chat. Regular and predictable contact matters more than the number of people you know.
How connected are you?
One short check brings together two validated tools that look at connection from different angles: the size of your social network, and how lonely you feel. Answer all nine questions and you will see a result for each. They can point in different directions, and both are worth knowing.
What connection adds up to
The research on social ties compares groups of people rather than counting your exact contacts, so these are study findings, not a personal slider. They come from a meta-analysis that pooled data on more than 300,000 people.
Greater odds of survival over the study period for people with strong social relationships, compared with those with weak ties. Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010.
Researchers place the health risk of isolation and loneliness alongside smoking and obesity. The reassuring side is that connection can be rebuilt at any age.
An odds ratio of 1.5 is what researchers get when they model survival across thousands of people and compare those with strong relationships to those without, after accounting for age, sex, and starting health. It describes a group difference, not a guarantee for any one person.
Simple ways to connect
Reach out first
Pick one person to call or message this week. Making the first move, rather than waiting, is often what restarts a friendship.
Join something regular
A weekly class, club, walking group, faith group, or volunteer role brings you among people on a predictable schedule.
Connect by phone if getting out is hard
Seniors Centre Without Walls and similar programs offer group activities and friendly chats over the telephone.
Volunteer
Helping others builds connection and a sense of purpose at the same time, and it is welcome at any age.
Ask for help finding people
Call or text 211 at any time to find social and community programs close to where you live.
What the research shows
Strong relationships are linked with living longer
A review that pooled data from more than 300,000 people found that those with stronger social relationships had about a 50 percent greater likelihood of survival over the study periods. The effect held across age, sex, and starting health.
Isolation carries a risk like smoking
Researchers now place social isolation and loneliness alongside smoking and obesity as major risks to health. Some have described loneliness and isolation as a new pair of geriatric giants that family care should treat seriously.
Smith, R. W., Holt-Lunstad, J., & Kawachi, I. (2023). Benchmarking social isolation, loneliness, and smoking. American Journal of Epidemiology. · Freedman, A., & Nicolle, J. (2020). Social isolation and loneliness: the new geriatric giants. Canadian Family Physician.
Social engagement helps prevent frailty
Staying socially active is independently associated with a lower chance of becoming frail, and with slower progression once frailty begins. Connection appears to protect health through many paths at once, including activity, mood, and stress.