Open Editor's Digest for free
Rula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
What does the loneliness epidemic, declining rates of teen drinking and DatingDoes poor mental health among teens and young adults have something in common?
To begin with, two of them are somewhat disputed. The dearth of confirmed historical data on loneliness has led some to question whether there has been any rise at all, let alone in a pandemic. and on the mental health of young adults, Some argue A large part of the observed increase in problems is simply the discovery of previously undiagnosed conditions, others point out Misleading statistics.
Skeptics are not wrong to raise doubts, and there is almost certainly a degree of exaggeration. But over time both data and certificate Mountain, there Growing recognition The absence of concrete causal evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. In fact, there is a growing sense that these phenomena may not only be real, but are all part of the same broader shift: a decline in interpersonal social contact between people. Youth.
Until recently, there was evidence of loneliness Weak at bestBut surveys have previously shown a decline among American high school seniors Now showing a sharp rise. In the UK and Europe, new data published in 2024 shows a marked rise in loneliness among people in their 20s. This reflects patterns of socialization, or rather the lack thereof. As The Atlantic's Derek Thompson wrote last week, we increasingly live in our own world The antisocial century. Far from being a trend unique to the United States, it is sweeping the Western world. The proportion of young people on both sides of the Atlantic who meet regularly socially with friends, family or colleagues has declined sharply. In Europe, the proportion of those who do not socialize even once a week has risen from one in ten to one in four.
People in their teens and twenties now hang out as much as someone ten years older than them did in the past. It's not a case where 30 is the new 20, so much as 20 is the new 30. Less hanging out and less partying means less sex and less drinking. Both are developments welcomed by the public health community, but they hide a dark side.
Trends in time spent alone almost exactly parallel trends in mental health, where Rates of mental disorders It is increasing among young people, but not middle-aged or elderly people. Wealth of public health Research suggests that the two are not just a coincidence but are causally linked. Time spent alone is closely related Low life satisfaction And even High mortality rate.
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 by teens and young adults over the past decade, but little or no change among older groups. Importantly, these diary data also capture how people feel throughout their day as they do different things with (or without) different people.
Clear and consistent result is that spending more time alone is associated with lower life satisfaction, and that people report lower levels of happiness when performing the same activity alone compared to with a companion. Using the levels of happiness and meaning that Americans attribute to various activities in these records, I find that the decline in life satisfaction among young people between 2010 and 2023 can largely be explained by changes in the way they spend their time.
The most obvious reason in terms of timing and age gradient is the proliferation of smartphones and highly interactive social media, which has increased with the advent of… The era of short video. Of the dozens of activities ranked in US time use data, solitary hours spent gaming, browsing social media, and watching videos were rated as least important.
The fact that these assessments are made by teens and young adults who spend hours glued to their devices underscores the tragedy at the heart of this story: the people suffering are somewhat aware of what's going wrong, but they seem powerless to prevent it.
The last decade is a story of young people turning away from the pursuits that bring them the greatest satisfaction, replacing them – consciously or unconsciously – with faded imitation. Like a frog in a pot of water, the damage at any given moment is too subtle to be cut off, but after several years we may begin to reach a boiling point.
