Is social media really behind young people becoming lonelier these days?
Young
people are lonelier than all other age groups, according to recent findings
from the BBC
Loneliness Experiment. In a survey of more than 55,000 people, 40% of
16- to 24-year-olds reported feeling lonely often or very often. This trend for
high youth loneliness has also been captured in other national surveys by the
Office for National Statistics in 2017 and the Eden Project in 2015.
Loneliness
is typically associated with older generations, who may live alone or be less
capable of getting out and about. But young people can experience loneliness
despite having friends, being surrounded by people at school or having
supportive parents. This indicates that youth loneliness is more about finding
it difficult to connect with other people, as opposed to being alone.
For
instance, in her book Alone Together, MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle has argued
that people are beginning to favour communicating with others using new technologies
over speaking face to face. She argues that online communication lacks
intimacy, and though we might feel we are constantly connected or in the loop,
it actually leaves us feeling alone. Read
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