One in twenty young people in England now reports having no close friends — five times the share in 2014 — according to new research from the Institute for Public Policy Research. A growing number also say they are dissatisfied with the friends they do have. Jessica Murray’s feature in the Guardian reports the number and then spends most of its length on the harder question: what actually removed the conditions under which friendships form.
The starting point is a YouTube video. Tess Lavanda, 22, posted one titled “I don’t have any friends”; it has been watched more than half a million times in a month. Her Instagram reels — “I turned 22 alone”, “Living alone in London”, “Feeling alone this summer is OK” — collect thousands of views and hundreds of comments from people describing the same situation. Search terms like “solomaxxing” and “no friends aesthetic” return hundreds of videos, many from teenagers and young adults.
“I think people feel relieved it’s finally being spoken about,” Lavanda says. “No one felt brave enough to speak about it because there is this culture where people think being alone is embarrassing and wrong.”
The usual suspects, and a different explanation
Social media, mental health problems, the pandemic and financial instability are the four causes normally offered. The two researchers Murray interviews don’t dismiss them, but they direct attention elsewhere — to the erosion of what sociologists call weak ties.
Pamela Qualter, who studies child and adolescent loneliness, puts it in terms of practice: “We’re really lacking those very simple conversations you have each day with somebody you just bump into.” As a society, she argues, we have “stripped back places where young people can practise basic social skills like saying ‘hello’.” More people work from home; disposable income is lower “at a time when there are very few free or cheap places for people to come together.” Those small interactions are the building blocks — and the rehearsal — that turn into solid friendships.
Manuela Barreto, a social psychologist at Exeter, describes a shift in the field itself: away from individual explanations like poor mental health or low self-esteem, toward structural ones. “Getting a job, getting a first house, all of those things are very, very hard right now.” She is careful not to overstate the causal chain: “We don’t have the data that says this in black and white, but that can cause anxiety and get in the way of feeling capable of being a good friend and being a person who deserves to have good friends.”
What the data does not show
Qualter supplies the counterweight that keeps this from being a simple story of decline. There is not much evidence that young people are lonelier than their predecessors in absolute terms. Those aged 14 to 24 report the highest loneliness levels in the UK, and that has always been true. “Maybe our expectations of friendships are changing,” she says. “Maybe those people with fewer close friends are happy with that.”
What does appear to be shifting is the quality of the friendships that exist. Jodie-Leigh Foster, who trains youth workers in the north-east, says many young people describe relationships that “play out on social media and group chats, which can quickly turn to bullying and harassment. That leads to them becoming isolated and withdrawn.” Money is a concrete barrier — some young people cannot afford transport to see friends outside school. Others struggle in large crowded spaces, with anxiety levels raised since the pandemic.
Foster’s closing observation is the one worth carrying: “People make assumptions about being a young person, that it’s a carefree time in their lives, and the whole world’s at their fingertips. But for some young people, that’s actually really overwhelming and daunting.”