Loneliness in young adults: A personal story for Mental Health Awareness Week

This blog post was written by Sophie Jones-Tinsley, Positive Digital Practices Project Officer from the University of Bradford.

A personal story

As a person who lives with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), I am constantly fighting the symptoms of feeling intense anxiety. One symptom that can cause isolation is that of needing a routine and not liking change. When social plans are altered, I find it very hard to deal with and as a result I decide not to go.

​At 26, I can better deal with these emotions however at 18, when I first started University, it meant that many people branded me as anti-social, unreliable, and sometimes rude. Alongside this I was a commuter student, so I didn’t live on campus, and this added to the social exclusion I experienced from my peers.

​Due to all this I often felt lonely and that I didn’t belong, so I focused on my studies and missed out on the “typical” University experience. It wasn’t until I found a couple of people like me who I bonded with (and am still friends with to this day) that I started to enjoy University life. However, I will always look back and regret not joining a support group or peer community to talk and share my experience, in the chance that someone else was feeling the same and could help.
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Loneliness in young adults

Loneliness is a topic that not many people discuss, especially when it comes to loneliness amongst teenagers and young adults (the 16-24 bracket).

Due to their age, it is deemed unlikely that those who are just starting out on their life journey, where being social and interacting with others is at its peak, would experience feeling lonely or isolated. However, this is far from the reality and students’ experiences of feeling lonely worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last year, the Office for Students (OfS) conducted a survey around how Coronavirus had impacted students’ education across the UK. Startlingly, 26% of students reported feeling lonely often or always, compared with 8% of the adult population in Great Britain over a similar period[1].
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Similarly, a study conducted in the same year by British Red Cross found the same result, with 26% of people aged 16-24 years old feeling lonely always or often[2].

The impact of loneliness on an individual’s mental wellbeing can be very damaging and research has shown that it can be associated with social isolation, poor social skills, introversion, and in some cases, depression[3].

Not only this, in the context of Higher Education, it can have an impact on an individual’s self-perception and self-worth, which can directly impact their ability to concentrate and focus on their studies and education[4].
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How can this be tackled?

At the University of Bradford, we are taking part in a project led by The Open University and funded by the OfS, which focuses on Positive Digital Practices.

Our strand of the project is called ‘Positive Digital Communities’, which can be defined as online spaces where individuals can interact through sharing of information, shared interests, ideas, or beliefs[5].

Research has shown a direct link to combating and aiding loneliness through digital communities and the importance of utilising technology as a way of connecting with peers[6][7][8].

Below are a few examples of how digital communities can have a positive impact on students’ mental wellbeing and a subsequent impact on reducing their feelings of loneliness:  

• Fosters a sense of belonging and connectedness/togetherness
• Welcoming atmosphere through daily interaction
• Increases feelings of self-belief and autonomy 
• Encourages camaraderie and peer support 
• Act as a lifeline for people who don’t live on campus, are on placement, are older students and who may not have the confidence to interact in person 
• Allows people to express themselves (use of emojis, GIFs, pictures etc)
• Helps broaden social networks 

Digital communities of any kind can therefore be very rewarding, and I encourage you to reach out and share your experiences with others, because we’re more alike than people realise, and we can also help each other more than we realise.
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Sophie Jones-Tinsley works as a Project Officer at the University of Bradford on the Positive Digital Communities project. If you would like to find out more about the project and the work we are doing, please email: [email protected]

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References
[1] Coronavirus and higher education students - Office for National Statistics
[2] Lonely-and-left-behind.pdf
[3] Cacioppo JT, Cacioppo S. The growing problem of loneliness. Lancet. 2018;391(10119):426. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30142-9
[4] Brakespear, G. & Cachia, M., (2021) “Young adults dealing with loneliness at university”, New Vistas 7(1), p.31-36. doi: https://doi.org/10.36828/newvistas.23
[5] I. G. Publisher, “IGI Global,” [Online]. Available: https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/creating-analytical-lens-understanding-digital/7583.
[6] El Morr, C., Maule, C., Ashfaq, I., Ritvo, P., and Ahmed, F., (2020) “Design of a Mindfulness Virtual Community: A focus-group analysis”, Health Informatics Journal 2020, Vol. 26(3) 1560–1576
[7] Pimmer, C., Abiodun, R., Daniels, F., and Chipps, J., (2019) “I felt a sense of belonging somewhere”. Supporting graduates' job transitions with WhatsApp groups”, Nurse Education Today, Vol. 81
[8] Brakespear, G. & Cachia, M., (2021) “Young adults dealing with loneliness at university”, New Vistas 7(1), p.31-36. doi: https://doi.org/10.36828/newvistas.23