Young people are one of the age groups most likely to be affected by loneliness in the UK, with chronic experiences of loneliness a risk factor for mental health difficulties.
Several of the projects have addressed knowledge gaps in understanding and measuring loneliness and its drivers in young people, and ways of tackling loneliness.
Conceptualising and measuring loneliness
Existing questionnaires do not fully capture the breadth of emotions that loneliness evokes in children and young people. This could undermine research findings, and limit the effectiveness of interventions to tackle loneliness because they are based on an incomplete picture.
The Youth Loneliness Scale (YLS) team have run creative workshops and focus groups to explore young people’s experiences and perceived causes of loneliness at different ages, finding similarities across ages in descriptions of feelings and thoughts, but differences in the relationships and developmental challenges associated with loneliness. They also explored young people’s strategies for coping with these experiences. Their findings are contributing to the development of a new, developmentally appropriate measure of loneliness in young people.
Another of the studies, SOCITS, is exploring different spaces around school, how young people use these spaces, and the interactions they have in them. They are interested in the impact these can have on factors such as stress and loneliness that are strongly linked to mental health.
This includes a computer-generated artificial school that can be used to test out what would happen if situations in school were changed, such as the way students move through corridors. The approach has uncovered "hotspots" such as stressful locations, or situations with negative interactions for certain student subgroups. These have allowed schools to better tailor approaches to the specific dynamics and context of their school. The team have recorded webinars to support schools, local authorities and health improvement teams to use their approach to identifying adjustments that can be made to the environment to tackle loneliness and stress.
The Loneliness in the Digital World award has developed a new method for measuring young people’s online and offline social interactions, to understand better how these relate to loneliness and mental health.