As social creatures, humans need collaboration to survive and flourish. Most individuals want to engage with others profoundly and personally, not simply as acquaintances, coworkers, classmates, or “friends” on Facebook. The recent events, such as the outbreak of COVID-19, have led conceptualists to address one of the most fundamental psychological needs: belonging. The urge to belong may be addressed to different degrees in different settings.
According to Rotondi et al. (2017), loss of belonging has been linked to stress, disease, lower well-being, and despair. It’s easy to feel lost and alone when you don’t have a sense of belonging, which is a terrifying place to be in this vast globe, especially for youngsters and the elderly (Alizadeh et al., 2018). Collaboration and group interactions resulted in a higher degree of survival throughout time.
Maslow valued belonging so highly that he ranked it only above physiological and safety requirements in his hierarchy of needs (Hopper, 2020). There have been things to belong to since the start of our species: families, tribes, countries, and faiths, to mention a few. However, all of this is changing today (Allen, 2020). Perhaps breaking down, broadening, and becoming less defined.
In 2020, Allen explained that the human emotional urge to identify with and be accepted by group members is the need to belong, also known as belongingness. This may include the desire to join a school friendship group, to be welcomed by colleagues, to be a member of an athletic team, or to be a member of a religious organization (Amati et al., 2018). From a cognitive standpoint, belonging may be seen as the outcome of unfulfilled social connections and activity norms, that is, a gap between wanted and accomplished social ties (Dahlberg et al., 2018).
In an article by the National Institute on Aging (2019), Dr. Siegel claimed that this sensation of isolation and separation stems from mind/brain dysfunction. Scientists commonly refer to the mind as “the brain in motion.” If the mind is purely the outcome of brain activity, then the self derived from the mind is distinct from everyone else’s self (Gorenko et al., 2020). Dr. Siegel believes that a realistic model of the mind must contain an interpersonal component and that relationships are as much a part of the mind as the brain is (Carragher & Ryan, 2020). This research investigates whether or not belonging, and friendships evolve with age and how they characterize and make sense of fundamental changes in modern society.
Literature Review
The desire to belong may afflict people of any age, although, for different reasons, older adults are more likely than other groups to feel lonely. One reason for this is that as individuals get older, they are more likely to lose loved ones and, as a result, to live alone (Donovan & Blazer, 2020). Another factor is that they are more likely to have sedentary habits and poor health, limiting their ability to interact with others outside the house (Prohaska et al., 2020). According to Dahlberg et al. (2018), the desire to belong among middle-aged and young individuals in various European nations is between 20% and 35%, up to 50% in those over 80.
Emerson et al. (2020) claimed that most data suggest an increase in belonging among older persons during the epidemic. During the pandemic, studies on older persons in the United States (US), the Netherlands, and Austria discovered an elevated or high level of desire to belong (Elliott O’dare et al., 2017). Comparable to those reported in experiments on different subgroups of older adults in several nations, including psycho-oncology patient populations and long-term care facility residents in the Netherlands, individuals with multimorbidity in Hong Kong, and members of an older adults’ organization in the United States (Rotondi et al., 2017; Guthmuller, 2022). Rodrigues et al. (2021), in their research of older persons in Israel, revealed low levels of belonging. In contrast, a study of younger older adults aged 65-71 years in Sweden showed no change in levels of belonging.
Longitudinal research on aging in Ireland discovered that one-third of persons over 50 felt lonely, rising to 45 percent beyond the age of 74, with the most friendless adults having a lower quality of life, poorer health, and considerably more depressive symptoms (Gardiner et al., 2018). The desire to belong has been linked to several chronic health diseases, including heart disease, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke, obesity, and psychological issues such as depression, stress, and anxiety (Ward et al., 2021). The desire to belong has also been related to a higher risk of death. Wilson et al. (2017) stated that Individuals with solid social interactions had a 50% higher chance of survival than those with bad social relationships, according to data collected from 308,849.00 people over 7.5 years.
In 2021, Savage et al. did research in Canada; one in four older women and one in five older males say they experience a desire to belong occasionally. While the desire to belong can affect people of any age, the research revealed that desire to belong patterns follow a non-linear U-shaped curve. The highest concentrations are reported among the young (25 years old) and elderly (greater than 65 years old) (Hall, 2018). Older persons are at higher risk because they are more likely to encounter events like retirement, chronic disease, widowhood, and living alone, even if predisposing variables vary by life stage (Elliott O’Dare et al., 2019; Jiménez, 2020). From the perspective of Van Orden et al. (2020), women experience a desire to belong at higher rates than males, which may be related to their longer life expectancies, higher risk of outliving their spouses, long widowhood, caregiving responsibilities, poorer wages, and greater propensity to admit a desire to belong.
Older adults require significant social support or social connections, described as the presence of others or the resources offered. This indicates the need to distinguish between social isolation and the desire to belong (Sundström et al., 2018). Having meaningful relationships and remaining connected to the community is essential for overall well-being and quality of life. In other words, quality, not a number, is necessary (Cotterell et al., 2018). However, data shows that the quality of social interactions in industrialized nations is deteriorating, as seen by the decreased intergenerational living, higher social mobility, a rise in single-person families, and an increase in age-related infirmities (Dahlberg, 2021). Considering shifting demographics, such as population aging and changes in family arrangements, which have limited the availability of informal family caregivers, society’s care and support, must reach the individuals who need them the most.
Justification and Rationale
With increased concern about the prevalence and repercussions of the desire to belong in civic society, there is also an expanding corpus of studies on belonging and social isolation across different age groups, particularly in high-income nations. However, there are considerable gaps in our understanding of the ‘real rates’ of sense of belonging within and between countries, the determinants of desire to belong in different populations and sub-groups, its influence on health and well-being, and a lack of high-quality research on effective remedies (Dahlberg et al., 2018). The study will add to the current investigations concerning the connection between the sense of belonging and age changes.
Data Collection and Methodology
The data was collected using survey questions as a method of data collection where time and environment contributed majorly to the interaction between the friends. The participants were selected using the convenience sampling method. Different individuals, both male and female, were invited to the survey. Before the survey, the researcher explained in detail the purpose. The participants’ privacy was assured, and everyone was to be anonymous. The survey noted that, due to the previous interaction, the group will always communicate even if one changes the environment; they will always connect through social media since they take communication as a norm. The data was then recorded following the aim of the paper.
Data Analysis
The research used a software analysis method. The data analysis showed a crucial part when deciding based on the relationship between friendship and age. The study did not consider variables in this case, including the environmental influence of individuals living with their friends. The environment is a crucial factor that greatly influences the kind and number of friends one is likely to be associated with. When all other variables are held equal, there is a tendency for older people to report feeling a sense of belonging less frequently. Young age showed a lower desire to belong than older people did. The research employed a correlation analysis to determine the likelihood of the friendship increasing or decreasing with age. Correlation coefficients quantify the strength of a link between age and friendship/belonging. A correlation of the variables shows that when one variable varies in value, the other parameter tends to vary in a given direction.
Table 1
Because the study hypothesis should show the predicted direction of the association, this correlation is one-tailed. The correlation coefficient of positive one in table 1 above shows that the variable had a perfect positive relationship. The direction of the link is represented by the sign of the Pearson correlation coefficient. Negative coefficients reflect circumstances where the value of the age variable grows while the value of the corresponding variable decreases. Negative connections have a negative slope. Therefore, with an increase in age, friendship decreases.
Discussion of Findings
Psychologists and other healthcare practitioners can better understand belonging among various age groups of clients by measuring a sense of belonging. From the survey data collected and the analysis done, the research finding concluded that age and belonging are not directly correlated. The data displayed a decrease in the line of the graph. Different factors might be to blame for the diminished sense of belonging. For instance, it is probable that as people age and go through significant life experiences and transitions, they grow more resistant to the need to belong. The factors that may be at play when it comes to age and belongingness at old include death of friends, the difference in personality, loss of contacts, accessibility to people, as well as accessibility as well as availability are some factors influence growth of friendship amongst acquaintances.
Limitations
To date, various settings have not been used to develop measures of belonging. Therefore, this study aimed to look at the initial psychometric characteristics of the sense of belonging across various age groups. The research participants’ characteristics should be considered when evaluating the findings. Because the age research was a convenience sample, the respondents lived independently.
Conclusion and Recommendation
Friendship is the connection that may persist the longest in one’s life. Even when death approaches, the preponderance of individuals engages in friendship. The probability that seniors will continue to enjoy and benefit from interrelationships with mates, coupled with the possibility of social solitude in old age, emphasizes the usefulness of researching friendship in novel ways to opportunities to promote comprehension of friendship framework, procedures, and stages, as well as their adverse implications and well-being. In turn, insights from friendship research may be used to develop methods for improving friendship possibilities and interactions to avoid or alleviate the desire to belong, social isolation, and depression.
The applicability of friendship intervention initiatives to late-adult friendship types should be considered, as well as the initiatives’ success in producing the intended results. In order to build on the previous intervention research, the study proposes that further investigation of friendship in old age will produce valuable information regarding the applicability and efficacy of current programs and may offer alternative avenues to investigate. Creating more specifically focused treatments is challenging without more significant information about relationship structure and dynamics. Therefore, more research on friendship’s social and psychological costs and advantages is needed. There is also a need for research on factors that hinder and not simply support friendship.
To customize interventions, we need to investigate the similarities and variations in friendship among cultural groupings locally and abroad. There are still many open concerns regarding friends’ functions in promoting older individuals’ psychological well-being and physical health, as this overview of ideas pertinent to friendship research in old age and the extant literature on late-life friendship demonstrates. The integrated conceptual framework and theory relevant to social connections provide direction for future research. Similar to how several researchers have investigated various types of social support, there is significantly less knowledge about other behavioral factors.
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