Why Young Adult’s Loneliness is Political

In recent years, young adults (typically defined as age 16 – 25years) have become increasingly recognised as a group that are vulnerable to loneliness. Most research on young adult’s loneliness takes a psychological perspective and is concerned with individual and interpersonal aspects such as personality traits, coping strategies, immediate social networks, and ‘social comparison’.  Both within research and more generally, young adults’ loneliness is understood as related to social media use, mental health problems, and transitions such as leaving the family home. However, evidence shows that among the general population, the distribution of loneliness is patterned by inequality, place, labour markets and welfare regimes. Understanding young adults’ loneliness means considering the structural conditions, inequalities, and economic policies shaping their lives. Two aspects of this that I discuss here are neglected communities and the politics of place, and changing employment and economic insecurity.

Neglected Communities and the Politics of Place

Communities affected by austerity and declining investment experience reduced opportunities for social contact and support. The availability and accessibility of social infrastructure and aspects of the built environment (such as housing), impact on reported levels of loneliness.  Klinenberg writing in their book “Palaces for the People: How to Build a More Equal and United Society” stresses the value of social infrastructure including shared, public spaces such as libraries, parks, cafes and community organisations. These provide opportunities to form social ties and build community belonging and support. When they decline via disinvestment, opportunities for low-cost, informal social interaction diminish, inequality is reinforced, and loneliness increases.

The neglect of these types of social infrastructure contributes to making young adults vulnerable to higher levels of loneliness. Research conducted with young adults in urban areas found that local amenities such as youth clubs, parks, pubs, and gyms were among the most “socially connected” places and fostered a sense of community, but such amenities have been affected by declining government investment. For example, a YMCA report shows how, in 2024-2025, local authority expenditure on youth services fell 76% in England and 29% in Wales compared to 2010-11 levels. Similarly the Local Government Association reported that funding for leisure infrastructure reduced by a third between 2010 and 2020. While the UK Government recently announced a £400 million investment to improve grassroots sports facilities across the UK, a coalition of representatives from local government and the leisure sector have expressed concerns about these plans, stating that unless this strategy incorporates a place-based approach directed through local councils, it won’t make the necessary difference to the communities most detrimentally impacted by health inequalities. In addition, there has been declining investment in local parks  and in funding for further education. These changes have wide ranging impacts on levels of health, wellbeing, and education, and they also impact young adult’s opportunities to meet, belong, and spend time in their local communities.

It is worth considering the patterns in terms of coastal communities in the UK which, while economically and culturally diverse, are also some of the most economically neglected areas. Researchers at UCL exploring young people’s life chances in these communities suggest that their everyday experiences in these areas, combined with place-stigmatisation, detrimentally impacts their sense of belonging. They have shown how young people in coastal towns experience marginalisation both within their towns – which tend to be unsafe, in decline, and designed for others’ needs – and within wider geographical structures, as their towns are themselves marginalised within the wider UK. Young people lack access to safe, welcoming leisure activities and spaces, showing how material investment in built environment impacts young adults’ felt experience of where they live and, related to this, loneliness.  This brings me to the second aspect I introduced, around employment and economic security.

Changing Employment and Economic Insecurity

The traditional pathway from education to stable employment and independent housing has become increasingly diversified, prolonged, fragmented and precarious. Recent ONS figures show that unemployment among young adults is at its highest level since 2015. Among those who are employed, fixed-term, zero-hour contracts and gig work are common.

For those without a job, unemployment is associated with loneliness and research suggests at least a 40% increase in the likelihood of reporting loneliness when unemployed. Work can offer a structure for daily life and opportunities for interaction, as well as a sense of belonging and life direction. Materially, the lack of economic resources resulting from unemployment or low-paid work restricts participation in leisure activities and opportunities to build social lives. This said, the nature of employment affects the extent to which it protects against loneliness. Precarious work can disrupt routine and prevent sustained workplace friendships. Working irregular hours and having multiple jobs can make synchronising social time difficult. Youth studies researchers in Australia understand this in terms of ‘temporal individualisation.’ This refers to individualised schedules of work and study that shape young people’s lives and which make the most valuable forms of social participation challenging in ways that were not the case for previous generations. For example, research with young adults in Western Europe suggests that the individuation and automation of work practices, coupled with feeling invisible in the workplace, and a lack of meaningful belonging to one’s employing organisation, can contribute to feelings of loneliness at work.  In addition, remote working – which has risen substantially since the Covid-19 pandemic for both young adult workers and the general working population – can increase loneliness by affecting the quality of social interaction and reducing spontaneous opportunities to connect. For example, a 2022 study found that hybrid working adults reported higher levels of loneliness when working at home compared to when working ‘in person’, and that they reported experiencing more support from colleagues and managers when co-located rather than remote.

Conclusion

Young people’s loneliness is political. It reflects area disinvestment, inequitable resource distribution, and impersonal and bureaucratic employment structures, all of which are consequences of government policies. Meaningfully addressing young adults’ loneliness would involve re-prioritising structural and social conditions which actively promote a sense of security, belonging, and meaningful social connections. Treating loneliness primarily through therapeutic or behavioural interventions may be beneficial to some at the individual level but risks ignoring the root causes and depoliticising the problem. Moreover, it is vital to accurately understand causes of young adults’ loneliness because it is connected to wider health problems and contributes to the socioeconomic health gap. In a 2018 study of young adults’ loneliness (that is rare in its adoption of an explicitly political and social lens), the authors argue that links between loneliness, isolation, and mental and physical health issues should avoid excessive medicalisation and “be explored in ways that provoke collective imagination of better ways of living”.  If we truly want to tackle the issue of young adult’s loneliness then we need to find ways of addressing the material and structural conditions affecting their lives rather than relying on individualised responses.

About the author: Lauren O’Connell is a Postdoc Research Fellow in the Institute for Public Health and Wellbeing at the University of Essex. She is working on a project exploring young adult’s experiences of loneliness and mental distress in Essex.