I like my own company. But do I spend too much time alone?

What did I do on the weekend? On Saturday morning, I called my sister, then my parents. A man stopped by to pick up a rug he’d bought from me online, and we had a brief conversation about the merits of buying secondhand.

Then I went for a run with members of my gym, our chat dwindling with each kilometre.

I spent the rest of the weekend alone and – aside from pleasantries with customer service staff and delivery drivers – in almost unbroken silence. All told, my social interaction probably amounted to two hours out of a total 48.

Whether this idea strikes you as heavenly or nightmarish probably depends on your own relationship to “alone time”. For someone working long hours in a highly social job, or parenting young children, a day alone might register as a luxury. But if you spend most of your time by yourself, and not by choice, it may feel like a burden.

More of us are spending more time by ourselves, thanks to cultural trends like remote work and growing numbers of people choosing to stay single and live solo. Of 2000 American adults surveyed by Newsweek last year, nearly half (42%) reported being less sociable than they were in 2019. That’s certainly been the case for me – though not for the worse.

My life became smaller and in some ways quieter when, in 2021, I moved to a new city and started living by myself for the first time – but instead of feeling lonely, I’ve mostly been more productive and more content. In the new peace and quiet, I realised that I need much more time alone than I’d previously been allowing myself.

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Now a new book is asking us to reconsider solitude. In Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone, authors Netta Weinstein, Heather Hansen and Thuy-vy T Nguyen argue that time spent by ourselves is not necessarily a threat to our wellbeing, nor an inherent good.

According to the authors, “alone time” and the extent to which it’s beneficial or detrimental is highly personal and not well understood by researchers.

“It’s something that society tends to frown upon. We tend to conflate the word ‘solitude’ with loneliness,” says Nguyen, an associate professor of psychology at Durham University and principal investigator of its Solitude Lab.

But they are different. Loneliness pertains to the distress felt at one’s social needs not being met and solitude is a state of simply being by oneself.

“You can be with other people and feel lonely,” says Nguyen. “Loneliness is more about the quality of our relationships: how connected you feel to people around you.”

For centuries the two have been used interchangeably, complicating analyses today. But while loneliness has been studied for decades, “the literature on solitude is just starting to catch up,” Nguyen says.

People speak of it as an experience best avoided, either unbearable or unsavoury, or else as the escape of the privileged – think of tech billionaires going off-grid to “detox” solo.

But these are extreme, even pejorative representations: “There’s been no coverage of solitude as a very ordinary thing that we all experience,” says Nguyen.

As a state, it’s neither negative nor positive. “But some people struggle with that time, even if it’s just 15 minutes,” she adds.

Your own baseline may depend on what you’re accustomed to. You might be less comfortable with your own company if you never get any chance to practise.

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While you might assume that introverts are more comfortable in their own company than extraverts, Nguyen’s study last year found no evidence of a link between introversion and a preference for solitude. Instead, a negative association was found with neuroticism, suggesting that people who are better at regulating their emotions tend to spend more (and higher quality) time alone.

The finding demonstrates the nuance that has been lacking in discussion of solitude, with past research often linking it to psychological problems. Nguyen’s research shows that our preference and tolerance not only varies between individuals, but also from day to day.

“The more we study solitude, the more I’m convinced that it has very much a regulatory capacity,” she says.

From a biological perspective, socialising is draining, even if we enjoy it; solitude “allows us opportunity for rest and recovery,” says Nguyen. There may also be psychological needs that are easier to satisfy in solitude, such as feelings of freedom and autonomy.

Solitude can seem unnatural in the context of our species’ sociable nature, but one study found that people who spend time alone tend to have higher-quality relationships. “In that sense, solitude fits perfectly into our framework of thinking of ourselves as social animals,” Nguyen says. We just don’t tend to see it that way.

Though it is slowly changing, a cultural stigma against solitude persists. We might even struggle to see time spent alone as equal to that spent in the company of others. “In my calendar, I put in events when I’m meeting other people; I don’t put in things that I do on my own,” says Nguyen.

I’ve found that one monastic weekend every month is enough for me to fully recharge. After three consecutive days alone, I start to go a bit loopy, my thoughts falling into well-worn grooves (about past mistakes, or future fears) that are rarely productive.

This is the balance I’ve struck now; it may not serve me in 30, 10 or even five years’ time. At Durham’s Solitude Lab, Nguyen is currently studying people’s transition to retirement, as well as first-time mothers: both examples of how changeable our experience of “alone time” can be.

New retirees tend to express trepidation about the sudden increase of solo time, and even concern about how to fill those hours, she says, while new mothers can report feeling alone despite never being apart from their baby.

Solitude can feel relatively unstructured, aimless and even empty – “almost like we have to create our own path” through it, Nguyen adds.

It’s true that too much time alone can focus our attention on how we feel our social connections to be lacking, in quantity or especially quality: a condition for loneliness. There is also the risk of rumination, contributing to the development of depression or anxiety.

If someone is struggling with their mental health, they shouldn’t soldier on alone, says Nguyen. But solitude itself – even when it’s a “chronic condition”, as might be said of people who, like me, live alone – isn’t necessarily deleterious to wellbeing.

“That, to me, is the biggest misunderstanding of the relationship between solitude and loneliness: loneliness is not something that just emerges, in and of itself – it’s usually symptomatic,” says Nguyen.

Those contributing factors might be physical health conditions that affect people’s ability to socialise; difficulties forming or maintaining relationships; and, for younger people, bullying or problems at home. There can also be structural challenges, such as the isolation often faced by immigrants and the decline in low-cost and accessible “third spaces” in which to pass time.

But too often, says Nguyen, talk of the reported loneliness “epidemic” neglects those broader factors in favour of focusing on individuals’ risk factors. “The focus is very much on the social interactions,” says Nguyen.

Efforts to bring down living costs and improve access to healthcare could be effective in tackling the problem by giving people more time and opportunity to foster connection. The US surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, has called for a shift in societal priorities, “to restructure our lives around people” instead of work and technology.

In the meantime, I wonder if the stigma against solitude is holding us back from making the most of it. The worst I ever feel about all the time I spend alone is when I think about others’ judgments, and what I ought to be doing with my weekends. Am I wasting the best years of my life, waiting for strangers to come and collect my furniture?

But Nguyen doesn’t think so. If it’s your own company that you’re craving, “allow yourself to have it”, she says. “Being away from other people doesn’t signal that there is something wrong with your social life … that’s actually nurturing of our solitude as well.”

My quiet weekend might have been nothing to write home about, but I began the week feeling rested, replenished and – what with the rug trade – richer, in more ways than one.

• Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone by Netta Weinstein, Heather Hansen and Thuy‐vy T Nguyen publishes in the US and UK simultaneously on 18th April by Cambridge University Press