Modern lifestyles have often been pegged as being "isolating," but new research suggests there has actually been a decrease in loneliness among American teenagers.
Research highlighted in a 2006 New York Times article "The Lonely American Just Got a Bit Lonelier" pointed at findings suggesting modern people tend to have fewer friends and are less likely to participate in social activities, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology reported. Despite these findings, recent research suggests people in this decade are more extraverted and have higher self-esteem.
In the new study researchers from the University of Queensland and Griffith University analyzed data on high school and college students. In the first review the team looked at a small sample of studies that focused on college students, and the second looked at high school students in an effort to get around the limitations of the first analysis.
The team looked at specific items within the data such as feelings of loneliness and a desire for more friends in what was referred to as "subjective isolation." The second factor, referred to as "social network isolation," included details of the students' social environment and support, such as whether or not they had friends to confide in.
The second analyses concluded there was an overall decline in loneliness between 1991 and 2012. They noticed a significant decline in subjective isolations and an increase in social network isolation, suggesting high school students had poorer social networks but perceived less loneliness. High school students tended to report fewer friends to interact with but less desire for more friends. Caucasian high school students were found to have a lower rate of loneliness than Black students, Hispanic students, or other races.
"The trend in loneliness may be caused by modernization.... People become less dependent on their families and need more specialized skills, which could lead to less interest in social support and more self-sufficiency," Mr. Clark says. "Over time, people are more individualistic, more extroverted, and have higher self-esteem," said lead researcher David Clark.
The researchers noted more research outside of the U.S. is required in order to make a solid finding on the modern state of loneliness.
"If other cultures show the same pattern of reduced loneliness in the face of poorer social networks, this would support the idea that modernization is responsible," Clark concluded.
The study was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin; some data was taken from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) project.
