For teens, the loneliness epidemic is not a myth
Even post-pandemic, more teens are lonely than in the early 2010s
Americans are spending more and more time alone. They don’t hang out with friends like they used to, they don’t go out to bars and restaurants as in years past, and they’re less likely to live with a romantic partner.
But are they more likely to be lonely? In the Atlantic, Faith Hill writes that there’s little evidence that Americans are any more lonely than they used to be. They might be spending more time alone, but it’s hard to say if they feel lonely because of it.
Thus, Hill argues that the idea of an American “loneliness epidemic” is overblown – in fact, the headline of her article is “The Myth of a Loneliness Epidemic.” As Hill points out, it’s challenging to find surveys administered every year with the same questions. Although many surveys have measured conditions closely linked to loneliness (such as depression, anxiety, and mental distress) among U.S. adults over the years, there’s not much data on loneliness per se.
But the article doesn’t tell the whole story. It committed a major oversight: It didn’t discuss teens. There is very solid evidence for increases in loneliness in this age group, and those results have been public for six years for U.S. teens and four years for teens around the world. The loneliness epidemic is very clearly not a myth for teens, and that’s not a new finding.
We also now have data from during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing us to see how several social forces impacted teen loneliness.
Starting in 1991, Monitoring the Future asked U.S. 8th, 10th, and 12th graders six questions about loneliness. Starting around 2012, more teens became more likely to agree with all of these questions about loneliness. Two items are especially straightforward: “I often feel left out of things” and “A lot of times I feel lonely” (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Percent of U.S. teens who agree that they often feel left out or often feel lonely, 1991-2023. Source: Monitoring the Future
From 1991 to 2007, teen loneliness actually declined slightly. Loneliness started to creep up after 2007, and then skyrocketed after 2012: 48% more felt lonely in 2019 vs. 2011, and 35% more teens felt left out. That’s more than enough to constitute a loneliness epidemic among teens.
Loneliness then spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a 14% increase in feeling lonely between 2019 and 2021. With pandemic lockdowns, fear of large gatherings (and even small ones), and online classes, this makes sense. Still, the pandemic shutdown of social lives appears to have increased loneliness less than the 2011-2019 replacement of in-person socializing with online interaction (particularly among teens and young adults — see p. 409-410 in the Generations paperback). Teens were already not getting together in person before the pandemic; it’s as if they were in dress rehearsal for the pandemic lockdowns without knowing it.
As things opened up post-pandemic, teen loneliness came back down (declining 13% from 2021 to 2023) But even as teens supposedly got fully back to their social lives, perhaps with a new appreciation of what they missed, their feelings of loneliness were just as high in 2023 as they were in 2019 (see Figure 2, which excludes the pandemic years).
Figure 2: Percent of U.S. teens who agree that they often feel left out or often feel lonely, 1991-2023, excluding the pandemic years (2020, 2021, and 2022). Source: Monitoring the Future
Teen loneliness has also increased internationally since 2012, across Latin America, English-speaking countries, Central/Eastern Europe, and Western Europe in the PISA dataset. Loneliness began to rise between 2003 and 2012, and then increased the most between 2012 and 2015.
Trends from before the pandemic (2018) to afterward (2022) vary, with loneliness increasing in Latin America and Europe but actually declining slightly in the English-speaking countries. Across all of the regions with the exception of Asia, teens were twice as likely to say they were lonely in 2022 or 2018 than they were in 2003 (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Percent of teens who agree that they often feel lonely at school, 2000-2022. Source: PISA. Note: Region averages weight by country population. Relies on a single item as respondents were asked only 5 out of 6 items in 2022.
There’s smaller and less consistent change in Asia. Why? It may be connected to Asian countries’ more collectivistic cultures, or to more restrictive policies on phone use at schools. But there could be many other reasons – let me know what you think.
Overall, it’s distressing to see the Atlantic declare that the loneliness epidemic is a myth while ignoring the very important age group of teens. Social belonging is crucial for the mental health of adolescents, and the experiences and emotions people have in their teen years often stay with them as they grow older. It doesn’t do anyone any favors to ignore the very real increase in loneliness among adolescents.
Instead, we should be listening to what teens are telling us: They are lonely. The question is: What do we do about it? More regulation of social media, or even just more awareness of how to constructively use it, would help tremendously. U.S. teens now spend nearly 5 hours a day on average using social media. Perhaps an hour or less of that time is spent communicating with friends; the rest is watching videos and scrolling through influencer content. But teens are caught in a trap: They are afraid that if they give up social media they will miss out on what their friends are doing and will be even more lonely.
Teens and their parents can work together to solve this. Teens, talk to your friends about ways to communicate other than social media. Make your plans using group text instead, and get together in person as much as possible. Parents, say yes when your teen wants to go out with their friends. If they aren’t driving yet, drop them off at the movies or the ice cream shop for friend time apart from adults. Or set up a camping trip. Teens hanging out with their friends is not a waste of time. It’s good for their mental health, it’s good for developing independence, and it’s good for their social skills. And the more they can do it, the less lonely they will be.