In some countries, many more people are choosing to live alone nowadays than in the past. Do you think this is a positive or negative development?
First, living alone is definitley lonely and it leads to various mental problems. People who live apart from other loved ones or family members have to spend a lot of time alone. It is hard to have a chane to talk with someone, and it causes many diseases related mental problems. Attachment is one of fundamental factors for human mental health, and people living alone cannot easily interact with others and build necessary relationships. For this reason, it is well known that the sucide rate of person who lives alone is higher than others who live with family members or friends.
In addition, If people live alone out of family, they cannot experience many fucntions of family. A family is a start point and the smallet group of people where people can learn how to live as a human. Iteracting frequently at home, people learn a number of basic skills, for example, how to cooperate with each other, how to deal with small arguments between people, how to develop social relationships and so on. Therefore, living alone would throw away all those chances to learning these essential skills and that affects on their whole life in many negative ways.
In conclusion, even though many people choose living alone todays, it could lead to several mental problems which come from loneliness personally, and socially, make them lose precious opprotunity to lean basic skills for life. For theses reasons, I believe living alone is certainly a negative trend.