After posting a brief anthropological input on human nature on Page 2 post #45, I stayed away from this thread until now as have just re-read every post.
Despite a successful career in hardware electronics, at one point in my 30's considered a career change given a natural aptitude understanding how others think. So I began taking community college introductory courses in psychology, logic, and other communication areas. At some point I came to realize I did not have the patience being around various people with behaviors that annoyed me so it would be unwise to work in a field like psychology if the job involved changing others problematic behaviors. One can clearly intelligently explain to some what, why, how of whatever their issue is but unless they want to change, they are likely to ignore advice. That is especially true with the epidemic of substance abuse and those many with poor interpersonal communication skills.
Although one can be content being alone and occupied with whatever while not regularly feeling lonely about one's situation, it is abnormal for our evolved gregarious species. In this era given the wide range of individual situations, there are many seniors that have to deal with being alone. Because of the wide range of situations and personalities, what is best for one senior may not work for another. A senior that spent much of their lives relatively content and occupied mostly alone will view the issue differently than another person that interacted greatly with others during their lives. People need to understand that.
In our current technological era we have television, radio, Internet, smartphones, that can fill part of the gregarious void though will never be the same as personal face to face verbal communication our brains evolved for. That is a ongoing controversial subject now for those young adults that are dominated by smartphones. Much face to face human communication is non-verbal in the sub-conscious, especially interpreting mannerisms and subtle facial expressions and tones in another's voice and then reacting in kind communicating so to others. All these tech era devices lack non-verbal interactions to various degrees thus stunt or atrophe normal brain functionality if not regularly engaged.
Our human brains are incredibly plastic that current cognitive neuroscience has shown is significantly different than what was known even 2 decades ago. It is also a science area I've been studying via books and online sources, particularly youtube and is closely related to frantic AI research that has made astounding progress during the past decade. Basically each individual begins with a minor amount of innate instinctual behaviors plus a great deal of brain neocortex, relatively empty, waiting to be filled. Our human brain neocortexes interconnect and change at cellular chemical levels from what we experience, do, and think. In short, we are what we do. So if we humans are not in experiential situations our brains evolved for, the result is arguably likely to be less than ideal.