Loneliness, Children

Children's Experiences of Loneliness

When elementary school-age children are asked about their experiences of loneliness, they describe it as “feeling left out,” “feeling unneeded,” “being sad,” and feeling “like you don't have any friends.” Interestingly, even children as young as 5 to 7 years old can report feeling lonely and think of loneliness as consisting of being alone and feeling sad. Still, at this age level, children's understanding of loneliness is considered rudimentary because when asked whether it is possible to be lonely when playing with others, only a small percentage of children this young report that it is possible.

With regard to the formal measurement of loneliness, there is general consensus that loneliness is a subjective, personal experience that is best measured by self-report, rather than by inference from observational or psychophysiological measures. Accordingly, researchers have used questionnaires (multi-item formal scales with excellent internal reliability) to measure loneliness. Most measures contain some items that ask directly about loneliness, but the content of scales is often diverse, with many items assessing perceptions of social support, [Page 991]self-efficacy, perceived acceptance by peers, or perceived participation in friendship, rather than loneliness per se. New efforts are being made to create highly reliable measures for children that restrict item content to feelings of loneliness. This solves the problem of overlapping content that can result when loneliness is studied in relation to factors such as social support or participation in friendship.

There is evidence that children's feelings of loneliness are moderately stable even over a fairly extended time period (e.g., correlations of .55 over 1 year). Although there is a need for more cross-sectional and longitudinal research, it appears that youth experience more loneliness during middle school than during the elementary school years. Furthermore, there are marked differences in loneliness as a function of developmental problems. Children who suffer from developmental disabilities, such as mental retardation, learning disabilities, or autism, generally report higher levels of loneliness than regular-education students. However, with regard to gender, studies of children in kindergarten through the sixth grade do not show reliable gender differences in rates of loneliness.

Associations between Loneliness and Children's Family Relationships

Children's relationships with their family may affect how often and how intensely children feel lonely. Research in this area has mainly focused on parent-child interaction style. Degree of maternal warmth and degree of interpersonal control appear to be important predictors of children's loneliness. For example, mothers who tend to give advice about problems to their children in a controlling way and with little warmth have children with increased levels of loneliness.

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