On the one hand, loneliness—a negative and unwanted state of being alone—has been shown to be correlated with increased cognitive decline, dementia, depression, suicide ideation, self harm, and even death (GerstEmerson and Jayawardhana, 2015; Hawkley and Capitanio, 2015; Luo et al., 2012; Endo et al., 2017)
solitude-a positive and self-driven state of being alone-has been shown to improve autonomy, creativity, and well-being (Long et al., 2003;Knafo, 2012;Coplan and Bowker, 2017;Coplan et al., 2019a).