The Mediating Role of Loneliness in the Relationship between Social Engagement and Depressive Symptoms: A Life Span Study of Korean Adults

Background and Purpose

This study investigates the different emphases individuals of varying ages place on their network types (e.g., family, friends, or community) and the importance of those networks differing on their mental well-being. The study drew conceptualizations from socioemotional selectivity theory, which focuses on how the depth and breadth of social relationships change over the life course and how the importance of social relationships changes with aging. Based on the literature and socioemotional selectivity theory, purposes of this study were twofold: (1) to examine whether loneliness mediates the relationship between social engagement and depressive symptoms; and (2) to determine how stage of life moderates the mediation effect. The hypotheses of the study are: (1) people at different stages of adult life will differ in terms of engaging in social ties; (2) lower levels of social engagement will be associated with greater levels of loneliness and depressive symptoms; and (3) loneliness will mediate the relationship between social engagement and depressive symptoms and the mediation will be moderated by stages of life.

Methods

Data for this study were drawn from a 2017 survey with community-dwelling adults aged 18 and older in South Korea. Using a multi-stage quota sample method, the total of 1,017 respondents were sampled from three stages of life (young adulthood: 18-44, middle adulthood: 45-64, and older adulthood: 65 and older). The mediating effects of loneliness were tested between each of three social engagement-related variables (family network, friend network, and perceived community support) and depressive symptoms. The PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013) for SPSS was used for estimating mediation and moderated mediation effects based on a bootstrapping method.

Results

The sample consisted of 307 young adults, 337 middle aged adults, and 353 older adults. The mediation results showed life stages differed in mediation effects: the effects were most pronounced in the relationship of family network with loneliness for older adults whereas the size of friend networks significantly predicted loneliness for younger adults. Both younger and older groups felt less lonely when they had a higher level of perceived community support. Interestingly, the middle age group remained uninfluenced by the mediation effects.

Conclusions and Implications

The results of the study generally confirmed three study hypotheses. First, there were life stage differences with respect to the levels of social engagement. For family and friend networks, the middle age group had the largest networks in both categories. The younger group reported the smallest family network while the older group had smallest friend networks. Second, low levels of social engagement were associated with elevated levels of loneliness and depressive symptoms. Third, loneliness mediated the relationship between social engagement-related variables and depressive symptoms, and further the magnitude of the mediation effects was moderated by life stages. The results suggest that loneliness is one of the mechanisms by which social engagement exerts its effect on depressive symptoms. While results have direct implications for adaptive strategies with respect to the rapidly growing population of older adults in Korea, they also hold implications for population aging cross-culturally.