Why are young adults the loneliest age group?

Twenty-seven per cent. When Gallup and Meta asked people in 142 countries how connected they felt, that was the share of 19-to-29-year-olds who said they felt very or fairly lonely, the highest of any age group [1]. People aged 65 and over, the ones we tend to picture alone by a window, came in lowest, at 17%.

That flip surprises most people. A separate study built on the BBC Loneliness Experiment, with more than 46,000 people aged 16 to 99, pointed the same way: loneliness ran higher in younger people [2]. So if you are in your late teens or twenties and feel oddly unaccompanied, you are not the odd one out. Statistically, you are closer to the middle of the pack. Here is why it happens, and a handful of small things worth trying.

Why does it peak in your twenties?

1. Your life keeps getting reshuffled. School ends, courses end, flatmates move to other cities, and jobs change before you have even worked out which mug in the office kitchen is safe to borrow. Each move is normal, and each one quietly snips a few of the threads that held you to people. At twenty-three you might be on your third postcode in four years, which is a lot of starting over for anyone. Older adults have usually had decades longer to let their circles settle.

2. Friendship runs on hours, and hours are scarce. Jeffrey Hall estimated that going from acquaintance to casual friend takes roughly 50 hours together, to friend about 90, and to close friend more than 200 [3]. That is not a personality test; it is arithmetic, and the hours you once got for free at school now have to be scheduled around work, rent and a sleep debt of impressive size. If you moved somewhere new last spring, you are simply early in the count, and nobody finishes a 200-hour project in a few weekends.

3. A crowd is not the same as company. You can sit in a packed lecture hall, a busy open-plan office or a group chat with forty people in it and still feel unknown. Loneliness is often described as the gap between the connection you have and the connection you want, which is why headcount says so little about it. Being surrounded and being seen are two different experiences, and the first does not deliver the second by default.

4. Your brain is underselling you. After conversations with new people, participants in one set of studies underestimated how much their partner liked them, a pattern the researchers called the liking gap [4]. So the replay on the bus home (“why did I talk for six minutes about my cousin’s ferret?”) is probably harsher than the other person’s memory of it. They likely left thinking you were perfectly nice. Possibly more than that.

5. The culture says go it alone. In the BBC data, loneliness was also higher in men and in more individualistic cultures [2]. Places that prize independence can make reaching out feel like admitting defeat, as if needing people were a design fault. It isn’t. Wanting company is the standard model, not a defective one.

Small relief: low stakes, lots of repetition

6. Pick one place and keep turning up. The same café on Tuesday mornings, the same evening class, the same loop round the park at roughly the same time. Repetition does the heavy lifting here: the barista who starts your order when you walk in, the regular who always takes the seat by the window, the dog walker who graduates from a nod to a “morning”. None of that is a close friendship yet, but it is how the hours begin to add up without anyone having to be brave on cue.

7. Say one sentence to a stranger and see what happens. In Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder’s study, commuters expected talking to a stranger to be less pleasant than sitting alone, yet those asked to start a conversation reported a more positive journey [5]. One remark about the delayed train, the sudden rain, or the frankly heroic size of someone’s sandwich is plenty. If it fizzles after two lines, nothing has been lost except a little silence on a platform.

8. Send one honest message. Not a meme, and not “haha we should catch up sometime”, which everyone knows means never. Try something closer to “I’ve been a bit lonely lately and thought of you. Fancy a walk on Sunday?” It feels exposed for about four seconds; if the liking gap is any guide, the person reading it may well think more warmly of you than you are bracing for [4].

9. Bring in a person who does this for a living. If the loneliness has settled in for weeks, or it feels heavier than you can comfortably carry alone, it deserves to be said out loud to someone trained to listen. A family doctor, a counsellor at your university or workplace, or a support line where you live are all genuine options, and they have this conversation far more often than you might guess. Asking is a practical move, no more dramatic than asking for directions in a new town.

The long game, in brief

Loneliness in your twenties is common, it has reasons, and most of those reasons are about circumstance rather than character. Friendships at this age get built slowly: one coffee, one walk, one slightly awkward chat at a time. Nobody you admire got their people all at once, whatever their photos suggest. Tonight might just be the quiet before the count starts. Rain on the window, phone face down, one message drafted. Send it now or save it for the morning. Either way, the hours have to start somewhere, and they may as well start with you.

A short, honest caveat

This post is general information drawn from surveys and lab studies, not personal advice, and averages never describe any single life exactly. The research below measured groups of people in particular places and settings. If loneliness feels heavy, lasting or frightening, please talk to someone in person: a doctor, a counsellor, a trusted friend, or a support line in your area.

Sources

1. Gallup (2023). “Almost a Quarter of the World Feels Lonely.” Meta-Gallup Global State of Social Connections. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/512618/almost-quarter-world-feels-lonely.aspx
2. Barreto, M., Victor, C., Hammond, C., Eccles, A., Richins, M. T., & Qualter, P. (2021). “Loneliness around the world: Age, gender, and cultural differences in loneliness.” Personality and Individual Differences. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110066
3. Hall, J. A. (2018). “How many hours does it take to make a friend?” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518761225
4. Boothby, E. J., Cooney, G., Sandstrom, G. M., & Clark, M. S. (2018). “The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?” Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618783714
5. Epley, N., & Schroeder, J. (2014). “Mistakenly seeking solitude.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037323