Objective  To explore the research hotspots and trends of social isolation, and provide reference for future research.

Methods  The relevant literature on the topic of social isolation was collected from the Web of Science Core Collection and CiteSpace 5.7 software was used to visualize and analyze the number of articles, cooperating countries, institutions, keywords and co-citations.

Results  A total of 1 953 articles were included. The number of publications on social isolation research from 2001 to 2021 showed an upward trend, with a high of 370 articles in 2021, a decrease to 333 articles in 2022, and 165 articles in 2023. The country and institution with the most publications were the United States and University College London. The hotspots and frontiers of the research focused on physiological mechanisms, the prediction of the risk of social isolation and COVID-19 related research. The literature with the highest citation frequency and the highest intermediary centrality were all from Holt-Lunstad J et al.

Conclusion  Research in the field of social isolation in China started late but developed rapidly. The COVID-19 epidemic promoted the research development in the field of social isolation, and at present social isolation is still a hot research in China. Between 2001 and 2023, researchers studied the impact of social isolation in terms of physiological, psychological and behavioral mechanisms, but there is a lack of research on the differences in social isolation among different groups and intervention research on socially isolated people. In the future, Chinese scholars can try to localize social isolation and carry out Chinese social isolation research.

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