试题出自试卷《00603《英语写作》真题及参考答案（2022.10）》

We've all experienced loneliness from time to time. As humans are an incredibly social species, being alone or left out of a group causes the inevitable feeling that we experience as loneliness. Although feeling lonely is a normal part of being human, it doesn't mean that loneliness—especially prolonged loneliness— — is healthy.
Loneliness may do harm to the body. Scientists believe that since humans evolved to live in groups, being alone would make people more vulnerable to threats. Thus, loneliness is associated with paying more attention to threatening information. For example, when presented with photos of threatening and non-threatening faces, the brains of lonely adults process threatening information faster. This suggests feeling lonely puts our bodies on high alert,making us more responsive to threat than we typically are. While this hyper-vigilance can be adaptive when there is really an imminent threat to worry about, it also takes a toll on the body: Attention to threat increases our stress hormones, which in turn increases our blood pressure and affects the functioning of our immune systems.
There is also direct evidence that loneliness has an immediate impact on our brain. One study revealed that after periods of being socially isolated, adults showed activation in similar brain regions that are active when we're hungry. Another study looked at adults' brains during an activity after researchers convinced them that they were being excluded from a game with their peers. The parts of the brain that were most active when the adults thought they were being excluded are the same parts of the brain that are active when we feel physical pain. These suggest that loneliness literally hurts.
Then, what should we do? The obvious solution is to look for social support wherever we can find it. In a study of children who mostly grew up among a number of risk factors including poverty and family problems, the children who had the best outcomes on a number of measures had support from different people in their lives, including grandparents, youth leaders, and members of voluntary organizations. So having people in our life that support us can obviously help fight feelings of loneliness. We can also reach out to someone and talk about our feelings when we feel lonely, and we might find that we aren't as alone as we might have thought.
But what if we don't have enough social support? Research suggests that giving social support might be just as important for relieving stress as taking it. While both giving and receiving social support were related to better psychological outcomes, giving support was related to lower threat activity in the brain during a stressful task. So, helping others may do just as much to cope with the stress of loneliness as getting support from others, if not more.
In conclusion, feeling lonely is a normal part of being human, but it could cause serious health consequences. Fortunately, we can fight loneliness by getting or giving social support.