photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

A new study co-written by KU professor Jeffrey Hall aims to push back on certain narratives about loneliness in young adults. The findings of the study suggests that life changes that young adults face help create feelings of loneliness — even if they have an active social life.

In recent years — especially since the onset of the unique social changes sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic around the start of 2020 — the topic of feelings of loneliness and disconnection experienced by younger people has exploded.

The image that many people think of to characterize what has been called an epidemic is a “young person forlornly looking in their phone,” according to Jeffrey Hall, professor and chair of the University of Kansas Department of Communication Studies. But according to a recent study that Hall helped co-publish, that description falls short of reality.

“That’s just not an accurate portrayal of (youth loneliness),” Hall said.

Hall and his research colleagues — Natalie Pennington of Colorado State University and Amanda Holmstrom of Michigan State University — published a research paper in the journal PLOS One, suggesting that intense feelings of loneliness coexist for young people with rich social lives, with feelings of loneliness potentially stemming from the chaos of modern life.

Hall said he and his colleagues’ research was done as part of the American Friendship Project which looked at the state and well-being of friendship among a broad group of Americans. As part of the recent paper, Hall said the study included 4,812 participants who took surveys in either 2022 or 2023. What the survey found was that while young adults reported experiencing more loneliness, young adults also reported having more friends and having a deeper connection.

One reason why there is a gap in understanding this seeming paradox between feelings of loneliness and feelings of companionship is because researchers don’t study both ideas at the same time, Hall said. This study aims to push back on some of the misconceptions and explore how the feelings can coexist.

“(Feelings of) connection can be both things — the longing we have to have deeper connections with one another while simultaneously having a lot of time to spend with our friends or a lot of friends,” Hall said. “We also want that depth (in relationships).”

Part of the reason Hall believes this paradox impacts young people especially is based on a concept called “ontological security.” This theory posits that if people have a sense their lives are predictable and stable, they are more likely to feel secure and therefore less likely to feel loneliness. Hall said the cultural expectation for young adults in the United States — graduating high school and/or high school, moving for a new job — helps create a system where they are “having to reconstitute their networks of support and connection” with each step.

“Predictability and routine are antithetical to what it means to be a young adult in the United States,” Hall said.

In the study, Hall and his colleagues asked participants — while the study specifically was researching young adults, Hall said other age groups were “well represented” in their sample population — a 13-item question about “significant life changes” they had in the past year. Those changes include moving to a new place, getting married, having or adopting kids or experiencing the death of a partner or family member. The results found that the number of changes young adults went through were higher than other groups, and the higher the number of changes, the more likely they were to express feelings of both connection and disconnection. Hall believes this highlights the idea of ontological security in action.

“When life is in a constant state of change and flux, you can both have lots of friends and spend a lot of time with them, but also feel this longing for permanence and predictability,” Hall said.

Although Hall thinks the concept of ontological security is one way to potentially explain the increase in loneliness for young adults, there are other factors to explore. Hall noted that broader socioeconomic changes in recent years have led to people putting off major life decisions — like getting married or buying a home — for “longer and longer periods of time.” Those sorts of decisions often lead to a greater feeling of stability, so those delays could be another explanation for why more young people feel a sort of “nebulous, constantly churning feeling,” according to Hall.

Hall said a large reason for the study was to push back against the narrative that younger adults were not putting in great effort to maintain friendships or make new friends. He noted the study found that while middle aged people tended to report the highest feeling of connection, they also had fewer friends and didn’t make new friends as often compared to younger adults. Yet Hall said there is no narrative asking why middle aged people aren’t making friends.

Hall hopes the study reveals the importance of how frequent life transitions can make social life feel fragile — even for people with lots of friendships.

“People don’t quite get the picture here that connection and stability are very much necessary to keep loneliness at bay,” Hall said. “You need both things.”