Teens and Loneliness

Teenagers are the loneliest age group worldwide, the World Health Organization reports. The finding comes on the heels of a 2023 advisory in which former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness an “American epidemic.”

The label may seem overblown. Everyone feels lonely sometimes. But chronic loneliness can be corrosive to both physical and mental health. And it doesn’t need to be the result of literal isolation. According to clinicians (and poets), loneliness is the feeling of being alone, whether or not you actually are.

In online forums, teens long for a romantic partner (“I want a girlfriend. I want someone who cares, listens, and doesn’t judge me for being myself.”); others for more meaningful friendships (“I feel so lonely with my group of friends. I feel left out even when I talk to them.”) And while parents and other adults can’t swoop in to resolve these painful feelings, they can provide targeted support to help teens feel less alone.

To be lonely is to long for more intimate human connection than you currently have. Loneliness is the inverse of solitude, which is to find peace and comfort in being by yourself. In one survey, a teen participant described loneliness as feeling like you’re “alone in a crowded room.”

“Loneliness is wishing that you were with other people when you’re not, wishing that you were more connected to the people in your life, or feeling like people don’t understand or get you,” says Lauren Allerhand, PsyD, a psychologist at the Child Mind Institute.

“Lots of teenagers will say that they’re unhappy with their peer group or they don’t feel like anyone gets them,” says Dr. Allerhand, though she notes that they don’t always express it in those words. “What I often hear is, ‘I wish I was part of a friend group,’ ‘I wish I had more friends,’ or ‘I don’t know who to sit with at lunch.’”

Social connection is our “evolutionary superpower,” says Emma Zoloth, PsyD, a psychologist at the Child Mind Institute. “We get a lot of psychological benefits from being part of communities — not just participating or showing up but feeling understood and accepted.

One way to form connections is around common interests or values. For teens, that might look like extracurricular activities — the school newspaper, soccer, dance, theater, or gaming. Through these communities, we might make more intimate friendships “where we feel like we can be our full selves, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and be met with acceptance and understanding,” Dr. Zoloth explains. But building this kind of connection takes time and involves some discomfort because it can be tough to open up, to be even a little bit vulnerable, and share how you feel.

In periods of transition, loneliness is common but tends to ebb over time — starting high school or college, for example, or when a romantic relationship ends. The problem is when loneliness sticks.

Chronic loneliness can produce feelings of emptiness, a lack of motivation, or a reduced capacity to enjoy the company of others. Adds Dr. Zoloth: “Paradoxically, it can make us withdraw from activities because we don’t feel connected.”

When lonely teens withdraw, they can begin to perceive all social interactions as threatening and adopt behaviors that push others away — thus, reinforcing their social fears and making them lonelier. Researchers call this the “loneliness loop.”

Chronic loneliness can be predictive of depression — and conversely, depression makes teens more vulnerable to loneliness. Loneliness also puts teens at higher risk for anxiety, suicidal ideation, and physical health ailments brought on by stress.

There are some developmental reasons why teens are more prone to loneliness — and prone to experiencing feelings of loneliness more intensely than other age groups, says Dr. Allerhand.

“The experience of feeling alone in a crowd or feeling like everybody’s looking at you, that happens to a ton of teenagers,” she says. “Or feeling like people don’t totally get them, like they’re misunderstood, or like their friendships are surface level.”

Cognitively, teens are still a bit self-focused, she explains. “I don’t mean that in a rude way. I mean that their ability to think about things from perspectives other than themselves is still developing. So that’s why they can often be like, ‘This is only happening to me. I’m the only one who’s ever had this experience,’” which can feel really isolating, she says.

But researchers have some additional theories about why teen loneliness has spiked so significantly in recent years.

Excessive engagement with phones and social media is linked to more anxiety and depression among teenagers. Some research indicates a similar link with increased loneliness. But causation is hard to prove because our relationships to technology are complicated.

For example, say a teenager reports feeling lonely most of the time and also reports spending a lot of time on their phone. From a research perspective, it can be hard to distinguish if the time spent on their phone is making them lonelier, if they are reaching for the phone because they are lonely, or something in the murkier in-between.

Some studies, including this one from 2021 measuring school loneliness worldwide, identify a sharper increase in loneliness among U.S. teens around 2012 — the first year a majority of Americans owned a smartphone.

“I don’t want to land on ‘screens are all bad’ because sometimes we do feel connected and are able to find our community on social media,” says Dr. Allerhand. But, she adds, “Screens isolate people of all ages. And so, the more teens are using screens, the more isolation there can be.”

The WHO report found that young adults, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and ethnic and racial minorities are more at risk for loneliness.

For example, LGBTQ+ teens have particularly high rates of loneliness — they are roughly three times more likely to report feeling lonely than their non-LGBTQ+ peers, according to a 2026 study. This may be due to discrimination, harassment, or peer rejection; emotional isolation (for example, being closeted or guarded about your sexuality or gender); or passive exclusion. As David Oberleitner, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, told the New England Psychologist: “when the individual perceives that others do not respect them or do not want them around,” it can be just as powerful as being actively excluded.

Dr. Allerhand also thinks it’s important to consider the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown. Teens now were mostly in middle school then, which is an important time for learning social skills “like meeting new people, being a good friend, navigating teasing, and distinguishing among people who you find nice and people who you find mean,” she says.

“I think that probably everybody is a couple of years behind on their social skills, just because of the years they missed.”

While chronic loneliness can be serious, it’s important not to pathologize a teen’s behavior even if they are lonely, says Dr. Allerhand — in other words, feeling lonely doesn’t necessarily mean you have a larger mental health issue or that something is terribly wrong.

Still, our experts have some tips for parents on what to do when you see behavior that gives you pause or when a teen directly expresses that they feel lonely.

Reflect on the moments that gave you that impression. Was it when they shut themselves in their room all weekend? Or when they stayed home instead of hanging out with their friends? There could be other reasons for their behavior, so Dr. Allerhand advises asking open-ended questions.

“Just make an observation. Try something like, ‘I noticed after school all your friends went shopping, and you asked me to pick you up. What was going on there?’” she says. “So just, ‘I noticed and I observed,’ without saying something like, ‘Are you sad? Are you lonely?’ You want to keep it neutral and open to see if you’ll get any bites.”

“As parents, we have a perception of the type of life we want our kids to have. And I think it’s also important to give some space,” she adds. “If your child looks lonely, but isn’t saying they’re lonely, I might try these open-ended questions to see. Because they might just be in a period where they need a little bit more alone time.”

If your teen tells you that they have no friends — or feel lonely, isolated, or invisible — validating those feelings is incredibly important even if it feels hard. “I’m hearing you say you feel alone” or “I’m hearing you say you don’t have anyone to hang out with” may feel gut-wrenching to say out loud, but kids need to feel heard and understood, says Dr. Zoloth.

Your instinct might be to jump in and help solve the problem, but that can minimize their experience — “No friends? No problem, I’ll call your old pal down the street!” — making them feel more isolated. When it comes to next steps, Dr. Allerhand recommends a more collaborative approach.

“We want them to start forming these relationships themselves,” says Dr. Allerhand. “So if they are open to talking about it, I would try to figure that out together, or try to ask them, ‘What would you like to do? What do you think could make this better?’ It’s not that you can’t provide any ideas but try to be collaborative about it rather than solving the problem for them.”

While loneliness isn’t a clinical diagnosis, Dr. Zoloth does use a specific type of therapy with teens who struggle with feeling lonely. The therapy, RO DBT, or radically open dialectical behavior therapy, works best for people who are overcontrolled, or have trouble expressing their emotions.

At first glance, loneliness and overcontrol (think: perfectionism) might not seem connected, but Dr. Zoloth explains that many of the teens she works with are high-achieving, the kind of kid “a teacher could say is a pleasure to have in class” and thrives in structured class activities. “They look like they’re functioning fine, but during casual social time — lunch, hanging out after school at Starbucks — they’re awkward or uncomfortable or not going at all.”

“A big focus in RO DBT is helping people connect back to their communities and practice being more open and vulnerable when the situation calls for it,” she says. Part of the therapy is learning to recognize the when, where, and how of making meaningful connections.

Not every teen needs RO DBT, or any kind of treatment, for feeling lonely. But the techniques involved in RO DBT can help us all understand loneliness as something that can be addressed.

“The feeling of loneliness is meant to be information,” Dr. Zoloth explains. “It tells us that some area of our life that’s really important to us is being neglected or isn’t being addressed enough. And then we can use that information to help guide our behavior. Leaning toward connection, doing things that matter to us, and doing things for other people can be really powerful ways to combat loneliness.”