Living alone, feeling connected: television engagement, loneliness, and social isolation among elderly women

BACKGROUND: Rapidly changing family and migration contexts have made loneliness among older women in single-person households a key psychosocial issue. The literature has focused on loneliness as a lack of social interaction and isolation, with little attention to the emotional aspects of living alone and mediated forms of social contact. OBJECTIVES: This study examined the lived experiences of older women living alone in Kerala, India, including living alone, television engagement, emotional coping, memory, and relational continuity. DESIGN: A qualitative reflexive thematic analysis with phenomenological sensitivity was used. Twenty-two older women aged 62-79 years who lived alone in districts of Kerala were interviewed through semi-structured in-depth interviews. Interviews were conducted in Malayalam, and the data were analyzed using NVivo 14. RESULTS: Four themes were found: (1) emotional silence, solitary aging, and everyday loneliness; (2) TV as everyday companionship and emotional presence; (3) mediation of emotional coping and psychological escape; and (4) parasocial relationships, memory, and emotional identification. Loneliness was expressed as a relational phenomenon, while TV functioned as a 'mediated companion' that supported emotional regulation, continuity, autobiographical reflection, and psychological comfort. CONCLUSIONS: Mediated emotional life is an underacknowledged aspect of well-being in solitude. These findings have implications for gerontological assessment, social work practice, and mental health care for older women experiencing solitary aging.