Young people are hanging out less — it may be harming their mental health
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What are the Loneliness Epidemic, Declining Teen Drinking Rates and? a dateand do adolescent and young adult mental health disorders have anything in common?
For starters, two of them are somewhat controversial. The lack of robust historical data on loneliness has led some to question whether there has been an increase at all, let alone an epidemic. some argue that a significant portion of the observed increase in problems is simply selecting cases that were previously undiagnosed, while others note; misleading statistics.
Skeptics are not wrong to raise doubts, and there has almost certainly been a degree of overstatement.But as time goes on, both the data and testimony there is a mountain growing recognition that the absence of specific causal evidence is not evidence of absence. young people.
Until recently, it was a testament to loneliness weak at bestbut surveys previously showed it declining among US high school seniors now show steep climbs. New data released in the UK and Europe shows a significant increase in loneliness among people in their twenties. This reflects patterns of socialization, or rather the lack of it. As The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson wrote last week, we are increasingly living antisocial age. This is far from a US-specific trend, but it is sweeping the Western world. The share of young people on both sides of the Atlantic who meet regularly with friends, family or colleagues has fallen dramatically every fourth.
People in their teens and twenties are now socializing as much as anyone 10 years their senior. It’s not so much a case of 30 being the new 20. Less relaxing and less partying mean less sex and less drinking.Both developments have been welcomed by the public health community, but they mask a darker side.
Trends in time spent alone are an almost exact parallel to trends in mental health, where rates of mental distress are growing among the young but not among the middle-aged or the elderly.A fortune public health The research shows that the two are not just coincidental, but causal.The time spent alone is strongly related lower life satisfaction and even high mortality.
Some of the most valuable evidence comes in the form of detailed time-use records from the US and UK, which show significant increases in time spent alone among teenagers and young adults over the past decade, but little or no change in older age groups show how people feel throughout the day as they do different things with (or without) different people.
Clear and consistent exposure is that more time spent alone is associated with lower life satisfaction, and people report lower levels of happiness when doing the same activity alone compared to with a friend notes, I find that the decline in young people’s life satisfaction between 2010 and 2023 can be largely explained by changes in how they spend their time.
In terms of timing and age gradients, the most obvious culprit is the proliferation of smartphones and hyper-engaging social media, which has led to overindulgence. era of short video. Of all the dozens of activities assessed in the American time-use data, the hours spent alone playing games, scrolling through social media and watching videos were rated as the least meaningful.
The fact that these ratings are given by teenagers and young adults who are glued to their devices for hours underlines the underlying tragedy of this story; sufferers are aware on some level of what is going wrong, but seem powerless to prevent it.
The last decade has been a story of young people retreating from the pursuits that bring them maximum fulfillment and replacing them, knowingly or otherwise, with pale imitations start a boiling boil.
English