3.2 Loneliness

Adolescents are driven to form friendship groups, from which they gain a sense of belonging and in which they can form their own sense of identity. Feeling ‘left out’ for any reason can lead to loneliness. Loneliness research is an important area for improving understanding of how to help young people who are experiencing loneliness. According to UK (England) statistics, about 10% of 16 to 24-year-olds report feeling lonely ‘often/always’ and 23% report feeling lonely ‘some of the time’, which is significantly greater than people in older age groups (ONS, 2018). Comparable figures are not available for those under 16.

Research carried out during the COVID pandemic indicates how many children and young people find social isolation exceptionally difficult and challenging to their mental health and may add to many worries they have about their own health and the health of their loved ones.

You can read more about the impact of the COVID pandemic here (remember to open these links in a new tab or window, so you can return to the course when you are finished):

• Teenagers’ mental health under severe pressure as pandemic continues - new research [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
• Pandemic takes toll on young’s mental health, says report
• The impact of COVID-19 on linguists and their mental health
• Grief and COVID-19: Mourning what we know, who we miss and the way we say goodbye
• Five ways in which COVID-19 has impacted on progress in global health
• Coping in isolation: Time to Think
• How can Adult Carers get the best support during Covid-19 pandemic and beyond?
• How does COVID-19 affect cancer treatment?

Later in this course you will also have the opportunity to hear about young people’s experiences during lockdown and the impact of COVID on adolescent mental health.

Loneliness researcher Gerine Lodder has given a TED talk on adolescent loneliness. To get a sense of a young person’s experience of loneliness, work with the video in the next activity.

Activity 7: the experience of loneliness

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Step 1: Watch Video 4 from the beginning to the 3.30 minute point. What are first the two misconceptions about loneliness Gerine Lodder describes?

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 5: What you don’t know about adolescent loneliness | Gerine Lodder | TEDxGroningen

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Transcript: Video 5: What you don’t know about adolescent loneliness | Gerine Lodder | TEDxGroningen

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GERINE LODDER

I see a table with some of the girls in my class. I go over, grab a chair, sit down. They don't really seem to see me, they're talking about some teacher having fun, but they're not looking at me. Then I think of something to say and they're laughing and I'm in the conversation, this is good. But it feels fake, it feels like I have to try too hard. And I know that no matter how hard I try, I will never fit in truly, I will never belong with them as much as they belong together. But who cares, I'm in now, so it's good, it's good. And I don't know how long it will take because at some point they will realize how weird I am and they will not want to hang out with me anymore.

This feeling, the feeling of loneliness, the feeling that you lack something in your social life, quality or quantity, is something we all. Maybe also remember it from high school or maybe from a different period in your life, in a relationship when you start a new job. Or maybe even when you came in here today, when you saw people talking together and you had to butt into one of these conversations and you just didn't know how, that's awkward.

Well, I'm a researcher and my research is focused on loneliness. Now, before I tell you more about my research, I first want to tell you about three misconceptions you might have about loneliness. Misconception number 1, this is what loneliness looks like. Well, actually it can be, but this intuitive picture we all have that we're not lonely throughout our entire lives and then at some point loneliness skyrockets, this is not what we see. What we really see is that loneliness levels are more or less equal throughout our entire lifespan.

And then there's two peaks, one peak in the elderly and one peak in adolescence. So I think we should spend some of the time and effort we currently use for the elderly for adolescents, for kids between 12 and 25 because if we can give them the tools to deal with these feelings of loneliness now we might be able to help them throughout their entire lifespan.

Misconception number 2, loneliness is just a normal part of growing up. Well, actually that's not really a misconception because it's actually true. Loneliness is like hunger, you can see loneliness as an equal to hunger. If you're hungry this is your body telling you you need to eat. And it's good that we have this signal because you need food to survive. Well, similarly loneliness is a signal from your body telling you you need to connect, and just like we cannot survive without food we cannot survive without others, human beings are built to be with others.

So being able to feel hunger is good, starvation is not good. Being able to feel lonely is good, chronic loneliness is not good. And we estimate that about 3% of our youth feel lonely chronically, so they don't just feel lonely temporarily as a signal to make them move on, they feel lonely for months, years, or even their entire lives. And this is truly bad because it relates to very many negative outcomes.

We have mental health outcomes, lower depression, self-esteem. We have physical health outcomes, lower sleep quality, heightened stress responses, and in the long term the consequences of loneliness are comparable to those of obesity in terms of early death. And we have consequences for how we fare in society- school grades, dropping out of school delinquency.

So mental health, physical health, how we fare in society, actually those are the three things we find crucial in our kids growing up, and loneliness affects all of them. And that makes sense because loneliness touches our core. And if a core is affected, the whole system is affected. So really we should pay attention to the social health of our youth.

Misconception number 3, kids are only lonely because they're on their phones all the time, because they're on social media. Well, if that's true, then we should have seen an enormous increase in loneliness in the last 10 to 15 years, and we don't really see that. So it can't be that loneliness is a sole cause of loneliness in young people or that social media are the sole cause of loneliness in young people, but what can be is that some kids use social media in a way that's not healthy for them so that the same mechanisms that cause loneliness offline also play a role online.

Now, my research is aimed at these causes for loneliness offline and I've seen that there is not a single cause. There's very many different causes for loneliness, but it boil down to three main reasons. Main reason number 1 or category number 1, some kids are lonely because they truly don't have access to their peers, they don't have access to peers or to social support from their peers. So kids who are bullied, kids who are sick so they can reach other, kids who are socially excluded, those are kids who can feel lonely because they can't reach their peers.

You also need quite good social skills to fit in basically. So if you lack those social skills, ranging from basic conversation skills to very complex skills such as adapting to subtle social norms in your environment, if you lack those skills it's very difficult to form and maintain satisfactory relations.

And then there are some kids who feel lonely because they're captured in their own head, they view themselves negatively and their social environment negatively. They think their friendships have low quality whereas their friends don't really think so. They are more negative about their classmates than others are. So it's in the way they perceive their social world. So we have social environment, social skills, and how we perceive the environment.

You can imagine that these are such different types of causes for loneliness that we also need very different solutions, they're not a one size fits all solution for loneliness. Luckily we do have staff out there that can help, we have excellent social skills trainers, excellent psychologists. So there is help out there. The thing is, we need to get the right kids to the right place. And that's quite difficult because from the outside we can't really see what's going on.

Loneliness is a subjective feeling, some of these mechanisms are also inside your head. So what we need to do is talk to these kids, talk to them, ask them about their loneliness and ask more about the cause for their loneliness because then we can get them to the right place. And believe me I know it's difficult to talk about loneliness. I started this talk by telling you about how I was lonely in high school, and that's difficult for me. I know it makes no sense. I'm 32 years old, this was a long time ago. It's actually my job to research loneliness and still I feel afraid that you might judge me if I tell you that I was lonely. So if that is difficult for me, if for me that's connected to shame, how is that for someone who's 15 right now.

If we contribute to remaining this taboo, to keep loneliness a taboo, then we can't expect our kids to come to us with their problems. So we need to talk about it and also we need to ask them about their loneliness. It should be as normal to ask about loneliness as it is to ask about school grades and mental health. So don't just ask him, how are you doing but specifically ask them how are you doing with your friends? Do you sometimes feel that others have more to do than you? Do you sometimes wish you had more people to talk to? If we ask those questions, we can get behind loneliness in our kids.

So let me ask you right now, who of you know someone between the ages of 1 and 25? Raise your hand if you know someone. Oh, Wow, that's almost everyone. But that's wonderful, that's really great because I encourage you, please talk to those kids because you can make a difference in these kids' lives. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

End transcript: Video 5: What you don’t know about adolescent loneliness | Gerine Lodder | TEDxGroningen

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Video 5: What you don’t know about adolescent loneliness | Gerine Lodder | TEDxGroningen

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Discussion

The two misconceptions are:

• Loneliness is only a problem in older people

• Loneliness is just a normal part of growing up

It is important to realise that feelings of loneliness are to some extent normal – as part of a normal range of emotions – yet chronic loneliness can be debilitating and problematic.

Step 2: Continue watching Video 4 to 4.32 minutes. Notice what Gerine Lodder says about the effects of loneliness on a young person’s health.

Discussion

Loneliness affects young people’s mental health, causing depression and lower self esteem. It can also affect physical health and wider success in society. We should pay attention to our children’s social health, because it has an impact on everything else.

Step 3: Continue watching Video 4 to the end. Write down the third misconception and the ‘real’ explanation:

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Discussion

The third misconception is that young people are only lonely because they are on their phones all the time. The ‘real’ answer is that they are lonely because they have no access to peers, may lack the social skills, may feel captured inside their own heads, in the way they perceive their social world. Fortunately, encouraging young people to talk about their relationships can help.

Later in this course you will focus on the different strategies and approaches that can be used to support a young person who is experiencing mental health difficulties perhaps in relation to feelings of loneliness and bullying.

You have covered a lot of ground so far, thinking about the characteristics of adolescence. In the next section, you’ll consider the implications of all this in relation to how people might set the limits on what is ‘normal’.