Band 7 essay sample | Positive and negative effects of living alone

Essay topic

More and more people are now living alone. Is this a positive or negative development?

The following is an essay submitted by one of our readers.

In many parts of the world, people prefer living alone more than before. I believe this phenomenon is a negative trend due to many reasons which I will discuss in this essay.

People who are living alone are more vulnerable to crimes. Living alone might encourage criminals to break into their house and steal valuable items or even kill the person if he or she tries to stop them. This happens because it is easy to threaten a guy than a group of people. People who are living alone have no one to help them when there is an emergency. For instance, a survey in Brazil found that 70% of robberies in Rio de Janeiro were committed in houses of people who live alone.

Living in a house alone might cause loneliness. When a person lives at a separate place, he or she will not be able to interact with people for more than 8 hours a day at workplaces or classes because friends prefer to get together on weekends, not on weekdays. That’s why people who live alone would feel lonely and not like their peers who live with friends or family. Not to mention that loneliness might lead to an incurable psychological illness. To illustrate, the Guardian revealed that 80% of the visitors of psychiatric hospitals in the UK are suffering from loneliness because they are living alone.

To conclude, living alone is a negative development since people who live alone would be vulnerable to crimes, and it might let them feel lonely as well.