Band 6.5
Today, many old people feel lonely, and this problem is getting bigger in many countries. There are some reasons for this, and governments and families should do something.
One reason is that young people move to big cities or other countries for work. Their parents stay alone in small towns. Another reason is modern life. People are busy and neighbours do not talk to each other like before. Also, some old people cannot go out easily because their health is not good, and their husband or wife has died.
There are some solutions. Families should visit their parents more often and call them every week. Local governments can open clubs for old people, for example dance classes and lunch clubs, so they can meet friends. Young people can also visit old neighbours and help them with shopping.
In conclusion, old people are lonely because families live far away and modern life is busy. If families and governments work together, this problem can become smaller.
Band 7.5
Loneliness in old age is increasingly recognised as a health problem in its own right, linked to depression and even early mortality. Its causes are structural as much as personal, and the measures that work share one feature: they create regular contact, not one-off kindness.
The deepest cause is geography. Labour markets pull adult children to big cities and abroad, leaving parents in towns whose own services are thinning. A second cause is bereavement compounded by frailty: when a spouse dies, a person can lose not only companionship but the driver, the cook and the link to every shared friendship at once. Third, modern neighbourhoods are simply not built for lingering — few benches, few local shops, neighbours who commute — so the casual daily contact that once happened by default now has to be arranged.
Because the causes are structural, goodwill alone is not a solution; regularity is. Community transport schemes that collect the same passengers every week turn a bus ride into a social institution. Intergenerational housing, in which students receive cheap rooms in return for set hours of company, has cut reported loneliness sharply where it has been tried in the Netherlands and elsewhere. At family level, the equivalent is rhythm rather than intensity: a fixed weekly call matters more than a guilty monthly visit.
None of these measures is expensive beside the medical costs of untreated loneliness. What they require is the recognition that company, for an older person living alone, is not a luxury to be fitted in but a basic need to be organised.
