Alright, even if Akon is a reported polygamist, his 2005 single proves that the man can still get lonely. Apparently, even successful pop stars feel the sting of social and emotional isolation. The video shows a depressed Akon turning down an invitation from friends to ruminate on a relationship that went awry, as he wanders the streets to mourn his lost love. The Senegalese singer admits that “Ever since my girl left me/My whole life came crashing down.” A heavily sampled chorus reinforces this anguish that Akon is feeling:
Lonely
I'm Mr. lonely
I have nobody
For my own
If ever the :( emoticon were necessary, it would be now. Sure, Akon has had his down moments (Exhibit A and Exhibit B), but you kind of have to feel for the guy a little bit throughout the video. What’s worse, while many people— Akon included— think loneliness is merely a gloomy or uncomfortable feeling, prolonged social isolation is in fact a serious detriment to one’s mental and physical health. If Akon continues to be so lonely, he may not even have the strength anymore to throw fans off the stage.
The song has become more relevant due to a recent article in The New Yorker arguing that the effects of loneliness on the human brain are so devastating that solitary confinement should be outlawed in prisons as a form of cruel and unusual punishment. The piece is a little too heavy on the qualitative than the quantitative for my taste, but author Atul Gawande presents case after case of prisoner’s in solitary confinement slowly using their mental capacities and, more importantly, their grip on reality.
However, you don’t have to be a prisoner alone in a cell to feel the damage brought on by a lack of social connection. A considerable amount of research, completed primarily by the University of Chicago’s John Cacioppo, painstakingly details how loneliness is more than just an unpleasant feeling. For instance, a 2006 study led by researchers at San Diego State University illustrated that participants who were manipulated to feel a sense of social exclusion were worse at solving math problems than those participants in a control condition. Furthermore, these lonely participants showed significantly reduced activation in neural areas generally associated with reasoning, such as the right prefrontal cortex. So being alone won’t just make you sad. It can also make you stupid.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, loneliness can also make you fat. Consider this 2005 experiment, where some participants were told that people in a group did not want to work with them. These lonely and rejected participants then ate more cookies in a taste test than those participants who were led to believe they were being included. It’s easy to see how a prolonged loneliness can wreak havoc on one’s health. One 1988 article in Science even concluded that “social isolation is on par with high blood pressure, obesity, lack of exercise, or smoking as a risk factor for illness and early death,” which should be enough to rethink the next time you turn down an evening at Shooters.
In his not-so-cleverly-titled book, Cacioppo provides an evolutionary explanation to these findings, arguing that human evolution has selected for genes and traits that promote a desire to belong to a group. Cacioppo writes that, “survival of the fittest led to creatures that were obligatorily gregarious… However wealthy and technologically adept our societies become beneath the surface we are the same vulnerable creatures who huddled together against the terrors of thunderstorms sixty thousand years ago.” Noted primatologist Frans de Waal agrees, writing in his own book that all primates, and humans especially, are “social to the core.” In light of this recent research, it’s time that we stop viewing loneliness as merely undesirable but rather downright dangerous.
However, this isn’t even Akon’s only song about being alone. Perhaps my favorite song from last year, “Right Now (Na Na Na)” deals with many of the same issues. So, while being lonely can make you less healthy or intelligent, in Akon’s case at least, it can also make you rich.
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