Loneliness

Loneliness in Adolescence

To understand loneliness in adolescence, one first needs to make the distinction between a temporary, mild degree of loneliness that is easily overcome (state loneliness) and a longer-lasting, severe degree of loneliness that is difficult to overcome (trait loneliness). All adolescents may experience some degree of the mild state of loneliness. For instance, adolescence is a time of identity building, and to some degree adolescents need to be alone to process their own thoughts and feelings and build their own identities. During these alone times, adolescents may make use of several different types of media, such as the Internet, music, and television. These media can help adolescents in their identity building; for example, adolescents may use the Internet to research a wide variety of topics they find interesting, or they may listen to music to reinforce their current identities. Research has shown that, although these alone times can produce loneliness, adolescents report greater positive affect after spending some time alone. In other cases, the longer-lasting trait loneliness may be an indication of an underlying problem that needs to be addressed. Trait loneliness suggests that these adolescents may have characteristics that keep them locked in a cycle of loneliness. Three main characteristics are (1) how they think about themselves and their expectations about others when forming relationships, (2) their level of social skills, and (3) how they cope with loneliness.

Several researchers have shown that lonely adolescents may think in ways that keep them from forming meaningful relationships and thus make them feel lonely. Lonely adolescents may think that they are not capable of forming relationships, that they are not worthy of anyone else's affections, or that they will be rejected in social situations. Many of these thoughts occur automatically, and adolescents may be unaware of how much their thinking influences their behavior in social situations. For example, they may not initiate conversations in social situations for fear of being rejected, or they may say little in conversations because they believe the other people in the conversation are not interested in what they have to say.

Researchers have also shown that lonely adolescents have poor social skills. Poor social skills include inability to initiate or sustain a conversation, not knowing how to appropriately disclose information about self, insensitivity to social cues that other people exhibit, and not knowing how to be responsive to other people in conversations. For example, adolescents may disclose too much or too little information in conversations, thus making other people in the conversation feel uncomfortable and perhaps unwilling to continue further communication.

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