A 2022 survey conducted in 16 countries found that feelings of loneliness tend to decrease with age. That year, nearly 60 percent of young adults between 18 and 24 years reported negative effects on wellbeing from feelings of loneliness, while around 22 percent of respondents aged 65 and older reported the same. This statistic shows the percentage of people worldwide who reported negative effects on wellbeing from feelings of loneliness in 2022, by age group.

A survey of U.S. adults from December 2021 found that those aged 18 to 24 years were much more likely to report feeling lonely than older adults. This statistic shows the percentage of younger and older adults in the United States who reported feeling lonely as of December 2021.

According to a global survey, about 33 percent of adults experienced feelings of loneliness worldwide. Brazil had the highest percentage of people experiencing this, with 50 percent of respondents declaring that they felt lonely either often, always, or sometimes. Turkey, India, and Saudi Arabia followed, with 43 percent to 46 percent of respondents having experienced loneliness at least sometimes. On the contrary, the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, and Russia registered the largest share of interviewees which did not feel lonely.

Coping with loneliness during the pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly cut off people from all over the world from their social life, and the lack of companionship has been a difficult situation for many to cope with. In the United States, people who experienced lack of company were, unsurprisingly, individuals living alone, and unemployed, disabled, or unemployed people. In relation to mental health, Americans who reported more symptoms of depression were by far more likely to feel lonely.

Impact of mental health According to a survey conducted in 2021 among G7 countries, about seven in 10 people experienced a worsening of their psychological health during the pandemic. A study on clinician-reported changes in selected health behaviors in the United States showed that during the pandemic patients have suffered more from feelings of loneliness, depression or anxiety, and burnout. Also nutrition and other habits have been impacted. The study reported an increase in alcohol consumption, smoking cigarettes, poor nutrition, and use of other substances.

The percentage of adults (aged 16 and over) that responded to the question "How often do you feel lonely?" with "Always or often" or "Some of the time"

Rationale At the beginning of 2018, the Prime Minister highlighted the issue of loneliness, announcing a Minister for Loneliness and committing to develop a national strategy to help tackle loneliness and a national measure for loneliness.

The national strategy, A Connected Society: A Strategy for Tackling Loneliness, was published on 15 October 2018. The commitments made by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England in the strategy identify loneliness to be a serious public health concern.

In keeping with the Loneliness Strategy, loneliness is defined here as: “a subjective, unwelcome feeling of lack or loss of companionship. It happens when we have a mismatch between the quantity and quality of social relationships that we have, and those that we want.” This is based on a definition first suggested by Perlman and Peplau in 1981(1).

Loneliness is a feeling that most people will experience at some point in their lives. When people feel lonely most or all of the time, it can have a serious impact on an individual’s well-being and their ability to function in society. Feeling lonely frequently is linked to early deaths and its health impact is thought to be on a par with other public health priorities like obesity or smoking.

Lonely people are more likely to be readmitted to hospital or have a longer stay. There is also evidence that lonely people are more likely to visit a General Practitioner or Accident and Emergency and more likely to enter local authority funded residential care.

At work, higher loneliness among employees is associated with poorer performance on tasks and in a team, while social interaction at work has been linked to increased productivity.

Loneliness can affect anyone of any age and background. It is important to measure loneliness because the evidence on loneliness is currently much more robust and extensive on loneliness in older people, but much less for other age groups including children and young people.

If more people measure loneliness in the same way, we will build a much better evidence base more quickly. That’s why the Prime Minister asked the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to develop national indicators of loneliness for people of all ages, suitable for use on major studies.

When reporting the prevalence of loneliness, ONS advise using the responses from the direct question, “How often do you feel lonely?” The inclusion of the direct loneliness measure in the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) will help inform and focus future work on loneliness at both a national and local level, providing a focus to support strategic leadership, policy decisions and service commissioning.

In this first set of data on loneliness prevalence at a local authority level, we have merged the two most frequent categories of feeling lonely (often or always and some of the time). This is due to small sample sizes and the limitations of this data will be explained in more detail in the caveats section.

This will be replaced next year by a 2-year pooled dataset which will have large enough sample sizes to report chronic loneliness. Presenting the data this year will help local authorities to work preventatively to tackle chronic loneliness by showing whether a local area has higher than national average levels of loneliness.

(1) Perlman D and Peplau LA (1981) 'Toward a Social Psychology of Loneliness', in Gilmour R and Duck S (eds.), Personal Relationships. 3, Personal Relationships in Disorder, London: Academic Press, pp. 31–56.

Definition of numerator Weighted number of respondents aged 16 and over, with a valid response to the question "How often do you feel lonely" that answered "Always or often" or "Some of the time". Active Lives Adult Survey data is collected November to November.

Definition of denominator Weighted number of respondents aged 16 and over, with a valid response to the question "How often do you feel lonely?".Denominator values in the Download data are unweighted counts. All analyses for this indicator have been weighted to be representative of the population of England.Active Lives Adult Survey data is collected November to November.

Caveats

Due to the sample size at local authority level, the "often or always" category is merged with the next most severe category of loneliness (people who respond as feeling lonely “some of the time”).

Standard practice is to report the two categories separately. However, data from other sources shows a degree of volatility in the ratio between these categories at the local authority (LA) level.

Therefore, there is a risk that when two local authorities are both reported as having 25% of people feeling lonely (often or always combined with some of the time), the actual figures for "often or always" might differ significantly. For example, one LA might have 24% often and always while another has only 3%, which would not be apparent in the combined category.

This could lead to underestimation or overestimation of chronic loneliness levels by local authorities.

Youth loneliness is common and associated with poorer health and wellbeing. Chronic loneliness could arise from a cognitive bias towards forming threatening over benign interpretations of social situations, leading to a behavioural bias favouring social withdrawal over social approach, thereby facilitating and maintaining persistent loneliness. We have developed an age-appropriate assessment tool, the Social Response Biases in Loneliness for Young Adults (SRBL-YA), for measuring these cognitive and behavioural biases. The SRBL-YA consists of 12 open-ended ambiguous loneliness-relevant scenarios that are followed by both a negative and a positive resolution to the scenario. When completing the SRBL-YA, one rates the likelihood of each of the resolutions occurring, on a 5-point Likert scale, from “extremely unlikely” to “extremely likely”.

The data presented here consists of an online survey, collected for the purpose of examining the psychometric properties of the SRBL-YA. Specifically, the factor structure of the SRBL-YA and its association with loneliness, depression, anxiety and social anxiety were examined in a sample of University students (n=416).

Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a 7-item scale may improve upon the 12-item version, however, the reliability of both versions was somewhat low (α = 0.68-0.81). Both versions of the SRBL-YA showed convergent validity with loneliness, even when accounting for depressive, anxiety and social anxiety symptoms, but require further validation in independent samples.

In a recent survey published in 2021, 93 percent of young Italian respondents declared to have felt lonely. About half of the interviewees stated to have experienced loneliness very often.

Objectives: This study investigated perceived loneliness, anxiety, and depression among young adults in the UK across five timepoints: pre-pandemic (December 2019), two coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdowns (March–June 2020, January–April 2021), and two post-lockdown phases (November–December 2021, May 2022). It aimed to assess mental health resilience, defined as a return to baseline levels post-lockdown, and identify critical timepoints where loneliness predicted mental health outcomes.Methods: A total of 158 participants (aged 18–82, predominantly under 25) completed online questionnaires measuring mental health (Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8); General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7)) and loneliness (DeJong Gierveld Loneliness Scale) at two data collection points, under a cross-sectional design. Retrospective data were collected for pre-pandemic and lockdown periods, while prospective data were gathered post-lockdown. Linear mixed models and regression analyses were used to examine changes in mental health and loneliness over time and to identify predictive relationships.Results: Loneliness and mental health significantly deteriorated during lockdowns, with depression and anxiety scores worsening from pre-pandemic levels. Partial recovery was observed post-lockdown, but scores remained above baseline. Loneliness emerged as a key predictor of mental health outcomes, particularly during post-lockdown phases. The immediate post-lockdown period was identified as a critical window for interventions.Conclusions: COVID-19 lockdowns were associated with heightened loneliness and mental health challenges, with sustained effects post-lockdown. Timely interventions targeting loneliness, especially after periods of social restriction, are essential to mitigate long-term mental health impacts and inform future responses to global crises.

In a recent survey published in 2021, 93 percent of young Italian respondents declared to have felt lonely. Some 41 percent of respondents declared that they have experienced loneliness because they did not feel loved. Other reasons for youth loneliness were a lack of common interests with their peers and a feeling of not being listened to by their own family.

Prevalence of reported loneliness in children and young people for various socio-demographic characteristics, England and Great Britain.

IntroductionSocial isolation is a main risk factor for loneliness, health issues and psychological diseases. With its restriction measures, the coronavirus pandemic has led to an objective reduction in meaningful interactions, communication, and social contacts in general (social isolation). However, it has been shown that older adults cope differently with social isolation. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the changes of social contacts of older adults over the pandemic period of 4 years.MethodsFor this purpose, N = 175 older adults (Mage = 72.60, SDage = 6.12 years, Mdnage = 72, Range: 60–87 years) were asked at 3 time points (2019, 2021, 2023) with how many people they had contact in the reference month (May, November). In addition to the number of contacts, participants were also asked about the type of the relationship (e.g., family, friends, neighbors), the type of contact (e.g., telephone, video conference and/or by written messages) and the emotional closeness (close, medium, low). We used an ego-centered “social network” circle to measure social contacts of older adults before, during and after the pandemic. The data collection was limited by the changing corona restrictions.ResultsResults indicate that behavior in social contacts essentially depends on age, gender, and level of depression. We found a clear temporal drop in social contacts independently of age and gender during the pandemic. After the pandemic close contacts did not recover to prepandemic level. Especially, Young-Old (

Percentage of persons aged 15 years and over by frequency with which they feel lonely, by gender, for Canada, regions and provinces.

Percentage of persons aged 15 years and over by frequency with which they feel lonely, by gender and other selected sociodemographic characteristics: age group; immigrant status; visible minority group; Indigenous identity; persons with a disability, difficulty or long-term condition; LGBTQ2+ people; highest certificate, diploma or degree; main activity; and urban and rural areas.

The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health: A Comprehensive Literature Review Research Hypothesis

Our research hypothesis is that excessive social media use is associated with negative mental health outcomes, particularly depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbances. This hypothesis is based on the growing body of literature suggesting a link between social media use and mental health issues, particularly among adolescents and young adults. Data and Findings

This comprehensive literature review synthesized findings from numerous studies investigating the relationship between social media use and mental health. The data was gathered through a systematic search of major databases, including PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. The search strategy employed a combination of keywords and Boolean operators to identify relevant studies, focusing on research published within the past 10 years.

The review revealed a complex and multifaceted relationship between social media use and mental health. While some studies suggested a positive association, the majority of research indicated a negative correlation, supporting our initial hypothesis.

Notable Findings:

• Increased risk of depression and anxiety: Multiple studies found a positive correlation between excessive social media use and depressive symptoms, including feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and low self-esteem. Similarly, social media use was linked to increased levels of anxiety, potentially due to social comparison, cyberbullying, and fear of missing out (FOMO). • Sleep disturbances: Excessive social media use can disrupt sleep patterns, leading to insomnia, reduced sleep quality, and shortened sleep duration. Sleep deprivation can further exacerbate mental health issues, including depression and anxiety. • Social isolation and loneliness: While social media platforms aim to connect individuals virtually, they can paradoxically contribute to increased feelings of loneliness and social isolation. Excessive social media use can lead to a decrease in face-to-face interactions, resulting in a sense of isolation. • Cyberbullying: Social media platforms can facilitate cyberbullying, which can have severe psychological consequences, including increased anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. • Body image concerns: Social media platforms often present idealized and unrealistic portrayals of physical appearance, which can contribute to body image concerns and dissatisfaction.

Abstract Aim To investigate the relationship between social media use and loneliness and psychological wellbeing of youth in rural New South Wales. Design This was a web-based cross-sectional survey. Methods The survey consisted of 33 items including demography (12 items), participants’ social media use (9 items), mood and anxiety (6 items), perceived loneliness (6 items), the impact of COVID-19 on social media usage or perceived loneliness (2 items). The participants’ mood and anxiety were evaluated using the psychological distress tool (K6), while loneliness was measured using the De Jong Gierveld 6-item scale. Total loneliness and psychological distress scores were compared between demographic variables. Results A total of 47 participants, aged 16–24 years took part in the study. The majority were women (68%) and many had K6 score that was indicative of psychological distress (68%). About half of the participants indicated that Facebook (FB) was their most used social media platform and two in five participants were on social media within 10 min of waking up each day, about 30% spent more than 20 h per week on social media, and more than two-third sent private messages, images, or videos, multiple times a day. The mean loneliness score was 2.89 (range, 0 to 6), with 0 being ‘not lonely’ and 6 being ‘intense social loneliness’. One-way ANOVA and χ2 test results showed that those who used FB most frequently had significantly higher mean scores for loneliness compared to those that used other social media platforms (p = 0.015). Linear regression analysis revealed that those who commonly used FB were more likely to report higher loneliness scores (coefficient = –1.45, 95%CI –2.63, –0.28, p = 0.017), while gender (p = 0.039), age (p = 0.048), household composition (p = 0.023), and education level (p = 0.014) were associated with severe psychological distress. Conclusions The study found that social media usage, particularly FB, as measured by time used and active or passive engagement with the medium, was significantly linked to loneliness, with some impact on psychological distress. Social media use within ten minutes of waking increased the likelihood of psychological distress. However, neither loneliness nor psychological distress were associated with rurality among the rural youth in this study.

Loneliness outcomes for disabled people in England aged 16 years and over, with analysis by age, sex, impairment severity and region using the Community Life Survey (CLS) data.

Youth data for the fourth wave of the National Youth Survey are contained in this data collection. The first wave of this survey was conducted in 1976 (ICPSR 8375), the second wave in 1977 (ICPSR 8424), and the third wave in 1978 (ICPSR 8506). Data are available in this wave on the demographic and socioeconomic status of respondents, disruptive events in the home, youth aspirations and expectations, social isolation, normlessness, perceived disapproval by parents and peers, attitudes toward deviance, exposure and commitment to delinquent peers, sex roles, interpersonal violence, pressure for substance abuse by peers, self-reported delinquency, drug and alcohol use, and victimization. National sample of the American youth population selected by area probability sampling. Produced by the University of Colorado, Behavioral Research Institute at Boulder, CO. Datasets: DS1: National Youth Survey [United States]: Wave IV, 1979 Youths in the United States.

This dataset contains quantitative data of adults (N = 45) collected between November 2022 and August 2023 using Experience Sampling Method Software (PIEL Survey). Variables are age, gender, occupation, living situation, loneliness (DJG-scale), and satisfaction with relationships. The questionnaire and SPSS syntax are included.

Analysis of loneliness in Great Britain during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey.

This is the original unedited data set for the manuscript "The Role of Trait Mindfulness in the Association between Loneliness and Psychological Distress".

The survey includes:

Demographics The University of California Los Angeles Loneliness Scale–Version 3 (UCLA-LS; Russell, 1996) The Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire–Short Form (FFMQ-SF; Bohlmeijer et al., 2011) The 21-item Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) Questions regarding mindfulness and meditation practice Questions regarding relationships and home location and household composition Questions regarding the impact of COVID-19 measures on employment.

References Bohlmeijer, E., ten Klooster, P. M., Fledderus, M., Veehof, M., & Baer, R. (2011). Psychometric properties of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire in depressed adults and development of a short form. Assessment, 18(3), 308-320. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191111408231 Lovibond, S. H., & Lovibond, P. F. (1995). Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (2nd ed.). Psychology Foundation. Russell, D. W. (1996). UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3): Reliability, validity, and factor structure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66(1), 20-40. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa6601_2