A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Brief Online Self-Guided Interventions for Loneliness

Objective: Loneliness is a global health issue, but current loneliness interventions are not scalable enough to reach many who might benefit from them. Brief online interventions could greatly expand access to evidence-based loneliness interventions. Method: We conducted a pre-registered three-armed trial (masked ClinicalTrials.gov and OSF: https://bit.ly/47s2E8c) (N=908, ages 16-78) to compare three self-guided online interventions: a single-session intervention (SSI) for loneliness, a three-week, three-session loneliness intervention, and an active control supportive therapy SSI. Results: Loneliness decreased between baseline and week eight across all conditions (b = -5.80; d = -0.55; 95% CI, -0.62, -0.47; p < 0.01), but did not decrease significantly more in those assigned to either the loneliness SSI (b = -1.27; d = -0.12; 95% CI, -0.30, 0.06; p = 0.20) or the three-week intervention (b = -0.93; d = -0.09; 95% CI, -0.27, 0.09; p = 0.34) than those assigned to the control SSI. Participants found all three interventions acceptable but rated both loneliness interventions as more acceptable than the control (ps < 0.01). Far more participants completed the 10-minute control SSI (86.6%) and 20-minute loneliness SSI (69.4%) than the 60-minute three-week intervention (14.9%). Conclusions: An SSI for loneliness was not significantly less effective than a longer loneliness intervention and had a much higher completion rate. Yet, neither loneliness intervention reduced loneliness more than an active control SSI did, against our primary and secondary hypotheses. Future work should aim to design more effective SSIs for loneliness and identify populations for which SSIs might be most helpful.