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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
What is the loneliness epidemic, the declining rate of teenage drinking and Dealing Dateand worsening mental health among adolescents and young adults have in common?
To begin with, two of these are disputed to a degree. The lack of solid historical data on loneliness has led some to question whether there is any increase, let alone an epidemic. And on youth mental health, others argue that a significant part of the observed increase in problems is simply taking cases that were previously undiagnosed, while others point to misleading statistics.
Skeptics are not wrong to raise doubts, and there is almost a kind of overstatement. But over time and both data and tESTIMONY mountain, there is growing recognition that the absence of concrete causal evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Indeed there is a growing sense that these phenomena may not only be real, but all part of the same greater change: the fall of personal relationships. young people.
Until recently, the evidence of loneliness was weak at bestbut previous surveys show that it is declining among US high school seniors now show the steep climbs. In the UK and Europe, new data published in 2024 shows a marked increase in loneliness among people in their twenties. It reflects social patterns, or rather the lack thereof. As Derek Thompson wrote in the Atlantic last week, we are living in more and more the antisocial century. Far from being a US-specific trend, it is engulfing the Western world. The share of young people on either side of the Atlantic who regularly meet socially with friends, family or colleagues has declined significantly. In Europe, the share that does not even socialize once a week has increased from one in ten to one in four.
People in their teens and twenties now hang out like someone 10 years older than they used to. It’s not so much a case of 30 being the new 20, as 20 being the new 30. Hanging out less and partying less means less sex and less drinking. Both are advances welcomed by the public health community, but they hide a much darker side.
Trends in time spent alone are an almost exact match to trends in mental health, where rates of mental distress increasing among the young, but not among the middle-aged or elderly. A wealth of public health Research suggests that the two are not merely coincidental but causally linked. Time spent alone is strongly associated with low life satisfaction and even high mortality.
Some of the most valuable evidence comes in the form of detailed time-use records from the US and UK, which show a marked increase in time spent alone among teenagers and young adults. in the last decade, but little has changed in older groups. Most importantly, this diary data also captures how people feel over the course of their day as they do different things with (or without) different people.
A clear and consistent search so more time spent alone is associated with lower life satisfaction, and people report lower levels of happiness when doing the same activity alone compared to a partner. Using the levels of happiness and importance Americans place on various activities in these records, I found that the deterioration in life satisfaction among young people between 2010 and 2023 can be explained by a large degree through changes in how they spend their time.
The most obvious factor in terms of timing and age gradient is the proliferation of smartphones and hyper-engaging social media, which kicks into overdrive the during the short form video. Of all the dozens of activities rated in the American time-use data, the solitary hours spent playing games, scrolling through social media and watching videos were rated the most. slightly meaningful.
The fact that these ratings are given to teenagers and young adults who spend time glued to their devices highlights the tragedy at the heart of this story: the people who suffer are on some level knew what was wrong, but seemed powerless to stop it.
The last decade has been a story of young people retreating from the pursuits that brought them the most fulfillment, and replacing them – knowingly or otherwise – with pale imitations. Like the proverbial frog in a pot of water, the damage at any moment is too subtle to cut, but some years we may have started to reach a simmering simmer.
