It looks like this report is from 2018, and doesn’t incorporate the 2019 YouGov research I linked. (I doubt pre-2004 data will give us insight into modern loneliness. Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist back then, for instance.) This bit is interesting though:
More recently, some media outlets have misinterpreted the results of a 2018 Cigna survey to argue that loneliness has increased. The survey indicated that loneliness was higher for younger Americans than for older ones. A mistaken interpretation of this finding would be that older Americans were less likely to be lonely when they were younger than today’s younger Americans are. This interprets life-course changes in loneliness as reflecting a change over time for Americans whatever their stage in the life course. While USA Today reported the age-based results as “surprising,” the research on the relationship between age and loneliness suggests that the “[p]revalence and intensity of lonely feelings are greater in adolescence and young adulthood (i.e., 16-25 years of age),” decline with age, and then increase again in the very old.33 The Cigna survey does not support the claim that loneliness has increased over time, nor is the increased loneliness of adolescents a new revelation.
It’s not clear to me how to reconcile this with e.g. the research YouGov cites to attribute loneliness among current youth to social media use. I guess a natural first step would be to see whether the magnitude of historical effects in the Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behavior can explain what YouGov saw. I think you’d have to analyze data carefully to figure out if it supports the hypothesis “young people just tend to be lonelier” or the hypothesis “social ties get weaker with every passing generation + elderly people get lonely as their friends die”.
In any case, I think loneliness could be a problem worth tackling even if it isn’t rising. (And you will notice I didn’t technically claim it was rising :P) The point is also somewhat moot as only one person expressed interest as a result of me posting here.
Fair enough I haven’t looked at the YouGov report.
I responding to the thrust of Tyler’s quote at the top.
I doubt pre-2004 data will give us insight into modern loneliness. Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist back then, for instance.
That data is especially precious because you need a ‘before’ measurement to see whether social media coincides with any change or loneliness staying the same as before!
But I agree many problems aren’t increasing but are still well worth addressing!
It looks like this report is from 2018, and doesn’t incorporate the 2019 YouGov research I linked. (I doubt pre-2004 data will give us insight into modern loneliness. Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist back then, for instance.) This bit is interesting though:
It’s not clear to me how to reconcile this with e.g. the research YouGov cites to attribute loneliness among current youth to social media use. I guess a natural first step would be to see whether the magnitude of historical effects in the Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behavior can explain what YouGov saw. I think you’d have to analyze data carefully to figure out if it supports the hypothesis “young people just tend to be lonelier” or the hypothesis “social ties get weaker with every passing generation + elderly people get lonely as their friends die”.
In any case, I think loneliness could be a problem worth tackling even if it isn’t rising. (And you will notice I didn’t technically claim it was rising :P) The point is also somewhat moot as only one person expressed interest as a result of me posting here.
Fair enough I haven’t looked at the YouGov report.
I responding to the thrust of Tyler’s quote at the top.
That data is especially precious because you need a ‘before’ measurement to see whether social media coincides with any change or loneliness staying the same as before!
But I agree many problems aren’t increasing but are still well worth addressing!