Thanks to technology, today’s young adults are more connected than ever before. The world sits at their fingertips, offering immediate access to information and conversation. But as this online world becomes bigger and faster, social, in-person interactions are becoming few and far between. And millennials are becoming more lonely, isolated, and left out.
This trend is almost certainly overblown, though, according to a new study by the American Enterprise Institute. Only 8% of millennials reported feeling lonely frequently, while 40% said they feel lonely once in a while. More than half reported feeling lonely on rare occasions, if ever.
Still, millennials are statistically lonelier than older generations such as the baby boomers. So what’s going on? Perhaps this epidemic of loneliness — if we can call it that — has less to do with screen time and more to do with a lack of meaning.
The social factors that minimize loneliness are disappearing in the millennial generation. Marriage rates are declining, religious engagement is becoming less and less of a norm. The result is an internal disconnect from what makes a young person a human being: community, friendship, and love.
“[Young adults] are lonelier in general than older people because most of them are not as rooted in particular relationships and communities,” AEI’s Daniel Cox, Ryan Streeter, and David Wilde report.
All of this suggests there won’t be an easy fix. You can’t create purpose through policy, though you can encourage the factors that contribute to it, such as family, community, and religion. Encouraging young people to get off their phones more often wouldn’t hurt either.
—by Kaylee McGhee
