Young people hang out less – it can harm their mental health

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What makes the epidemic of loneliness, falling rates of teenage drinking and datingand worsening mental health among adolescents and young adults have in common?

For starters, two of them are disputed to some degree. The paucity of solid historical data on loneliness has led some to wonder if there has been an increase, let alone an epidemic. And on the mental health of young adults, some argue that a significant part of the observed increase in problems is only to pick up cases that were previously undiagnosed, while others indicate misleading statistics.

Skeptics are not wrong to raise doubts, and there has almost certainly been a degree of overstatement. But as time goes by and two dates and testimony mountain, there is increasing recognition that the absence of concrete causal evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Indeed, there is a growing sense that these phenomena may not only be real, but all part of the same broader change: down to in-person socialization between the young people.

Until recently, the evidence on loneliness was weak at bestbut earlier surveys showed that it is on the decline among US high school seniors now shows steep ascent. In the United Kingdom and ​​Europe, new data published in 2024 show a marked increase in loneliness among people in their twenties. This reflects patterns in socialization, or rather the lack of it. As The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson wrote last week, we are living more and more the antisocial century. Far from being a specific US trend, this is sweeping the Western world. The share of young people on either side of the Atlantic who meet regularly socially with friends, family or colleagues has dropped dramatically. In Europe, the share that does not socialize even once a week has increased from one in ten to one in four.

People in their teens and twenties now stretch as much as someone 10 years older than them in the past. It’s not so much a case of 30 being the new 20 as 20 being the new 30. Less hanging out and less partying means less sex and less drinking. Both are developments that have been welcomed by the public health community, but they mask a darker side.

Trends in time spent alone are an almost exact parallel of trends in mental health, where rates of mental distress they are high among the young, but not the middle-aged or older. A wealth of public health research suggests that the two are not merely coincidental, but causally related. The time spent alone is very associated lower life satisfaction and also high mortality.

Some of the most valuable evidence comes in the form of detailed time-use records from the United States and the United Kingdom, which show a marked increase in time spent alone among teenagers and young adults in the last decade, but little or no change among older groups. Most importantly, this diary data also understands how people feel in the course of their day as they do different things with (or without) different people.

A clear and consistent finding 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 a partner. Using the levels of happiness and significance that Americans attribute to various activities in these records, I found that the deterioration in young people’s life satisfaction between 2010 and 2023 can be explained to a substantial degree by changes in the way to spend your time.

The most obvious culprit in terms of timing and age gradient is the proliferation of smartphones and hyper-engaging social media, which have kicked into overdrive with the it was about the short form video. Of all the dozens of activities ranked in the American time use data, the solitary hours spent playing games, scrolling social media and watching videos are ranked as the least significant.

The fact that these ratings are given by teenagers and young adults who spend hours glued to their devices highlights the tragedy at the heart of this story: the people who suffer are on some level aware of what is wrong , but they seem powerless to prevent it.

The last decade is a story of young people withdrawing from the pursuits that bring them the most fulfillment, and replacing them – consciously or otherwise – with pale imitations. Like the proverbial frog in the pot of water, the damage at any time is too subtle to cut, but in many years we can start to reach a rolling fire.

john.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch