“There can be so much disappointment and loneliness because we are encouraged to aspire and have ambitions – and then what happens when we fail?
“Maybe exam results aren’t good enough. The ideal you’ve been built up for – like being a footballer, being a doctor – doesn’t happen.”
This 20-year-old woman, interviewed for a study on youth loneliness, captures the sense of pressure and isolation many young people say they feel.
The research, by Manchester Metropolitan University and the young person’s mental health charity 42nd Street, suggests youngsters often feel isolated and lonely when they fail to live up to expectations.
The youth-led research project – which specifically recruited young researchers aged 14 to 25 to interview 140 youngsters from a diverse range of backgrounds – found a range of issues increased levels of youth loneliness, particularly:
* the fear of failure and disappointing others
* pressures from social media
* major life changes, such as family break-up or moving away from home
* poverty
* and feeling different, particularly for LGBT youth.
The report – Lonliness Connects Us – says that “loneliness itself is often a source of shame and stigma in a world which seems to require the performance of happiness and success”.
I still feel very lonely
The 20-year-old woman interviewed said: “Old connections are broken. Who do you turn to? Not your family because you don’t want to add to their sense of disappointment.
“Online, happiness is compulsory. Looking happy online with a drink in your hand. You can’t say, ‘This is really hard, and I’m missing you.’
“And sometimes, even when I’ve now done everything I was meant to do, and I’ve succeeded in school and pleased my family and gone to uni, and I still feel very unhappy and lonely… what now?”
A recurring theme in the research was the loneliness that stems from a fear of disappointing those who have invested their hopes in a young person, if the path of education or career “success” is not sustained.
A 21-year-old man said: “If you asked me what represents my feeling of loneliness most, it’s when I’ve been in all weekend on my own and there’s leftover pizza in the fridge at the end of the weekend, because I’ve ordered a pizza but I can’t eat it all.
“I came here to go to university, but it didn’t work out. I’ve left home and don’t want to go back to the country town I come from, but I’m new here. Anyway, I’ve lost contact with my school friends.
“I don’t have a steady job. I get bits and pieces as a freelancer. But at the moment I’m working at a call centre, where I have to put up with a lot of rudeness.
“It’s all turned out so much harder than I expected, and I’m not making much money. I feel a failure at times, and I don’t want my parents to know.” Read more
