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What are the prevalence of loneliness, rates of decline in adolescent drinking and dating, and what are the deterioration in mental health among teenagers and young adults?
First of all, two of them are in some degree of contest. The lack of solid historical data on loneliness has questioned whether there has been any rise, let alone the epidemic. Also, some argue that in the mental health of young adults, a significant portion of the observed increase in problems is not only picking up previously undiagnosed cases, but also referring to misleading statistics. Masu.
Skeptics are not wrong to raise questions. And there was almost certainly some exaggeration. However, as time passes and both data and testimony increase, there is growing awareness that the lack of concrete causal evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Certainly, there is a growing sense that these phenomena are not only realistic, but are all parts of the same broader change.
Until recently, evidence of loneliness was weak at best, but older people at research high schools who previously showed it was declining now show steep climbs. In the UK and Europe, new data published in 2024 shows a significant rise in solitude among people in their 20s. This reflects a pattern of socializing, or rather a lack thereof. As Derek Thompson of the Atlantic wrote last week, we are increasingly living in an antisocial century. Far from the intrinsic trends of the US, this wipes out the Western world. The proportion of young people on both sides of the Atlantic who regularly meet socially with friends, family and colleagues has fallen sharply. In Europe, the share that doesn’t even socialize once a week has risen from a tenth to a quarter.
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People in their teens and 20s are just as hanging out as people 10 years older than they have before. It’s not a 30 case where 20 is the new 20. Because 20 is the new 30. Both are developments that have been welcomed by the public health community, but hide their dark sides.
The trend in time spent alone is a near-precise similarity of mental health trends, with the rate of mental distress increasing among young people, but not after middle age. A wealth of public health research suggests that the two are not merely coincidence, but are causal. Time spent alone is strongly associated with lower life satisfaction and increased mortality.
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Some of the most valuable evidence is in the form of detailed time usage records from the US and the UK. This shows a significant increase in the time spent alone between teens and young adults over the past decade, but has little changed among older groups. Most importantly, the data in this diary captures how people feel during the day when they do things differently with (or without) different people.
A clear and consistent finding is that more time spent alone leads to lower life satisfaction, and people report lower levels of happiness when performing the same activity alone compared to companions. Using the levels of happiness and meaning that Americans attributing to the various activities of these records, the deterioration in life satisfaction among young people from 2010 to 2023 is a considerable extent due to changes in the way they spend their time. You can see that it can be explained.
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The most obvious perpetrator in terms of timing and age gradation was the surge in social media for smartphones and engagement, which has been overdrive in the era of short form videos. Of all the dozen activities rated in American time usage data, lonely time spent playing games, social media scrolling, and video viewing are rated the least meaningless.
The fact that these ratings are given by teenagers and young adults glued to their devices highlights the tragedy at the heart of this story.
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The story is about the past decade that young people have brought them the most fulfillment and have retreated from their pursuit of consciously replacing everything else with pale imitation. Like the proverb frog in a pot of water, the damage at a particular moment is too subtle to get through, but in a few years you may be beginning to reach a hectic stew.
John.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch
Letter of response to this column:
The famous Scottish philosopher saw his mistake in how he did it / Michael Nevin, author, Edinburgh, UK
