Is it a fair comparison to say that loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking? Yes and no, explains theipaper's science writer StuartJRitchie 🔎 Analysis
And that makes the comparison to smoking far shakier. Of course, the association of earlier death with smoking needn’t be fully causal, either: people might take up smoking as part of a generally less healthy lifestyle even if it’s mainly, say, their diet or a dangerous job that causes them to die sooner . But given the sheer weight of evidence for the causal effect of smoking, we can be pretty certain that it’s a big part of the causal picture, in a way we really can’t for loneliness.
When you’re a doctor – or indeed, a government trying to plan its health policy – the distinction between prediction and causation really matters. It’s certainly useful to know what the predictors of health and mortality are, but it’s even better to know what causes what, so you can try to intervene. We know that helping people to stop smoking makes them live longer.
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