We often associate loneliness with ageing, but according to surveys, it’s young people who feel lonely the most.

Causes of loneliness among Gen Z

• We know that moving to a different place increases your likelihood of being disconnected from friends. Many young people move around for education or training and sometimes for work.
• Young people are less likely to be in a long-term relationship than people in their 50s. Being in a relationship can be a protective characteristic of loneliness.
• Some mental health conditions (such as anxiety and depression) are more common for young people. Feeling rubbish about yourself and increasingly stressed about the world isn’t a great basis for forming relationships with other people. Isolation, of course, also can make it harder to recover from issues such as anxiety and depression.
• I’m not signed up to the idea that smartphones are ruining young people (I loved the takedown of the Anxious Generation on If Books could Kill). But I do think it’s easy to feel pretty glum about your own life if you mainly see other people living it up on social media. This contributes to pressure to live your life a certain way, to have incredible friendships, and beautiful relationships.
• There can be a lot of pressure to be dating, to be in a relationship, to be having the ‘right kind’ or ‘normal’ sex. And all too easy to feel like you aren’t fulfilling the idea of what a young man/woman/person should be like.
• It’s easy to feel like you are not succeeding at a particular version of masculinity or femininity. Or even to feel like you are doing queerness wrong by being insufficiently cool.

How therapy can help

Therapy can help you untangle the weight of social expectations—what you truly want versus what the world tells you to be. It’s a space to let out the anger, sadness, and frustration that can come with this struggle (and yes, anger is valid!). Therapy also offers a chance to dive into your relationships, unpack past wounds—including those from childhood—and explore how they might still shape your life today.

If you are curious about any of this, I’d be happy to have a no-strings-attached chat with you to see if we might be a good match to work together.