- Nível B2
- Interpretação de texto
- Solidão positiva e bem estar
- artigo de divulgacao cientifica
- PUC Minas (Medicina)
- 2025
Inferência: quando a solidão traz benefícios (PUC Minas Medicina 2025)
READ THE FOLLOWING TEXT AND CHOOSE THE OPTION WHICH BEST COMPLETES EACH QUESTION ACCORDING TO THE TEXT:
The benefits of positive solitude
Over the past few years, experts have been sounding the alarm over how much time Americans spend alone. Statistics show that they are choosing to be solitary for more of their waking hours than ever before. Increasing numbers of people are dining alone and travelling solo and rates of living alone have nearly doubled in the past 50 years. These trends coincided with the surgeon general’s 2023 declaration of a loneliness epidemic. Loneliness and isolation are indeed social problems that warrant serious attention, especially since chronic states of loneliness can be linked with depression and a shortened lifespan.
According to Virginia Thomas, an American psychologist who has spent the past decade researching why people like to be alone, there is another side to this story. For some people, the shift toward aloneness represents a desire for what some researchers call “positive solitude”, a state that is associated with well-being, not loneliness despite the collective anxiety about being alone which she believes stems from our culture’s view of solitude. In this type of thinking, the desire to be alone is seen as unnatural and unhealthy, something to be pitied or feared rather than valued or encouraged.
A study published in February 2025 found that U.S. news headlines are 10 times more likely to frame being alone negatively than positively. This type of prejudice shapes people’s beliefs, with studies showing that adults and children alike have clear judgments about when it is and when it is not acceptable for people to be alone. This makes sense since American culture holds up extroversion as the basis for what is normal. Even though not all Americans are extroverts, we have been conditioned to cultivate that trait. Preferring to be alone carries stigma.
Still, the desire for solitude is not pathological, and it is not just for introverts. Nor does it automatically mean social isolation and a lonely life. In fact, the data does not fully support current fears of a loneliness epidemic, something scholars and journalists have recently admitted. In other words, although Americans are indeed spending more time alone than previous generations did, it is not clear that they are actually getting lonelier. Moreover, despite our fears for the elders, research shows that older adults are happier in solitude than the loneliness narrative would lead us to believe.
However, solitude’s benefits do not automatically appear whenever we take a break from the social world. They arrive when we are truly alone – when we intentionally carve out the time and space to connect with ourselves. Just as connection with others is essential for our well- being, so is connection with ourselves.
(From: https://theconversation.com. Access: 04/10/2025. Adapted.)
Fonte: The Conversation.
By reading the text it is possible to infer that:
- A) Someone who has preference for solitude will undoubtedly have a very solitary existence.
- B) The advantages of solitude are not guaranteed simply by distancing ourselves from society.
- C) The number of people living by themselves has not changed much in the past 50 years.
- D) Unlike children, adults have clear opinions about when it is normal for people to be alone.