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What is the epidemic of loneliness, declining rates of teenage drinking and datingand the severity of mental health among teenagers and older people is the same?
To begin with, the two of them contradict each other to some extent. The lack of hard historical data on loneliness has led some to question whether there is any increase at all, let alone an epidemic. And for the mental health of adults, others disagree that a significant part of the observed increase in problems is simply picking up cases that may not have been diagnosed before, while others point out misleading statistics.
Skeptics are not wrong to raise doubts, and there has almost certainly been some degree of exaggeration. But as time goes by and both data together evidence on the mountain, there is the growth of consent that the absence of causal evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Indeed there is a growing sense that these events may not only be true, but are all part of the same broader change: the breakdown of interpersonal relationships. young people.
Until recently, the evidence for loneliness was the same very weakbut previous research showed that it is declining among US high school seniors now show steep climbs. In the UK and Europe, new data published in 2024 shows a significant rise in loneliness among people in their twenties. This reflects social patterns, or the lack thereof. As The Atlantic's Derek Thompson wrote last week, we're always growing the anti-socialist century. Far from being a US-specific trend, this is sweeping the western world. The proportion of young people across the Atlantic who regularly meet socially with friends, family or colleagues has fallen significantly. In Europe, the proportion who do not sit down at least once a week has increased from one in ten to one in four.
Teens and twenties are now hanging around 10 years older than they used to be. It's not so much that 30 is the new 20, as 20 is the new 30. Both are developments welcomed by the health community, but they hide a dark side.
The methods of time spent alone are almost exactly the same as the methods of mental health, where stress levels they are increasing among the young, but not the middle-aged or elderly. Wealth of public health Research shows that the two are not coincidental but causally linked. Time spent alone is strongly associated with it low life satisfaction and even high mortality.
Another very important evidence comes in the form of detailed records of time use from the US and the UK, which show a significant increase in time spent alone among teenagers and young adults over the past decade, but little change among older groups. Most importantly, this diary data also captures how people feel during their days as they do different things with (or without) different people.
A clear and consistent result is that more time spent alone is associated with lower life satisfaction, and people report lower levels of happiness when doing the same task alone compared to a partner. Using the levels of happiness and meaningfulness with which Americans report various activities in these records, 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.
The most obvious culprit in terms of time and age is the proliferation of smartphones and hyper-engaging social media, which has gone into overdrive now. time for a short video. Of all the many activities measured in the American time-use data, individual hours spent playing games, scrolling through social media and watching videos were rated as the most important.
The fact that these articles are given by teenagers and young adults who spend hours glued to their devices underscores the tragedy at the heart of this story: poor people at some level know what's going on, but seem powerless to stop it.
The last decade is the story of young people withdrawing from the goals that bring them the most fulfillment, and replacing them – consciously or otherwise – with green simulations. Like the proverbial frog in a pot of water, the damage at any moment is too subtle to cut through, but over several years we may be starting to reach boiling point.