Does owning a pet really make you less lonely? A study of 2,328 people found a surprising answer

It has become conventional wisdom that owning a pet is good for your health. Dog owners walk more, people living alone feel less lonely, and trips to the doctor become less frequent — a phenomenon academics have even given a name: the "pet effect."

Some research has found that dog owners have a 24 percent lower mortality rate than non-owners. Other studies have linked pet ownership to reduced cardiovascular risk and better sleep. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a wave of reports suggested that pets helped ease depression and loneliness during periods of isolation.

Yet other studies have found no link between dog ownership and mortality. Some longitudinal surveys have found no difference in loneliness or depression between people who recently acquired a pet and those who did not. There have even been reports of elderly people suffering fractures after falling because of their pets, and of pet owners taking pain medication more frequently and facing a higher risk of depression.

A research team led by Rahel Marti and Karin Hediger of the University of Basel in Switzerland recently published findings in the international journal PLOS One based on an analysis of a nationally representative survey. Among 2,328 Swiss adults studied, there was no difference between pet owners and non-owners in loneliness, life satisfaction, or the number of doctor visits.

Of the 2,328 respondents the research team examined, 1,105 lived with a pet or kept one outside the home, while the remaining 1,223 did not own any.

Those who lived with animals visited a doctor the same number of times over the past year as those who did not. Loneliness and life satisfaction were also no different.

The hypothesis that walking a dog leads to conversations with neighbors and new social connections was also not borne out.

Pet owners actually scored slightly lower on self-rated health and smoked an average of 0.19 more cigarettes per day — roughly 70 more over the course of a year.

According to the research team, earlier studies that concluded pet ownership leads to longer life were skewed because the groups being compared were not equivalent to begin with.

In general, people who own pets and those who do not are not in the same circumstances. In this survey, pet owners were on average four years younger, more likely to be employed or in school, and more likely to live with family. Non-owners, by contrast, tended to be older and retired.

People who are younger, employed and living with family tend to be healthier and less lonely — for reasons that have nothing to do with animals. When that underlying difference is left unaccounted for, the benefit appears to come from the pet.

As for why pet owners in this study scored lower on self-rated health, the research team pointed to a different explanation.

The team suggested that people in poor health or under significant stress may have acquired a pet seeking comfort. In other words, it was not that owning a pet caused lower health scores — rather, people with lower health scores were more likely to own pets in the first place.

The research team also examined the nature of the relationship between owners and their pets. Even among pet owners, some simply provide a place to sleep while others spend the entire day with their animals, and the degree of closeness varies considerably.

The team measured attachment strength by asking whether owners thought about their pet when it was not around, whether they considered it a member of the family, and whether they felt very close to it.

The team expected that stronger attachment would correlate with better health and less loneliness, but the results told a different story. People who reported a strong bond with their pet were no healthier and no less lonely than those who did not. Life satisfaction showed the same pattern.

How deeply someone cherishes their pet, the findings suggest, is not determined by factors such as health status or loneliness.

However, the research team acknowledged as a limitation that health, loneliness and life satisfaction were each measured with only a single question. The questions were also simple, which may have made them insufficient for capturing complex psychological states.

The team also said researchers need to move beyond simply asking whether someone owns a pet with a yes-or-no question. Understanding how a person actually lives with their pet, they said, must be part of the picture.

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0352778

R. Marti, K. Hediger, E. Pauli, & J. Hattendorf, Factors of pet ownership associated with human health: A representative cross-sectional survey of Switzerland, PLoS One 21 (2026) e0352778.