Dealing with the Youth Loneliness Crisis
Why young people need courage
The incomparable study-finder Stephanie H. Murray recently shared this article from The Argument showing that the loneliness crisis is not just middle-aged men as is commonly thought (by me), but actually most pronounced among younger voters, and among them female voters. I strongly recommend reading the entire article. Maybe a survey that looks at more than just voters would reveal a different result, but it is a revealing study, particularly the way social isolation overlaps with low self-worth, anxiety, and inhibition. The COVID-19 Epidemic and the Internet are pointed to as factors contributing to this isolation and anxiety. I would also add that the #MeToo movement (for all the good it did!) likely made some young women afraid of young men and some young men inordinately afraid of crossing a line they couldn’t see. Having worked with many young people over the years, none of these results seem particularly surprising, although I would say that the young people I work with usually tend to have the benefits of stronger social networks by virtue of being in college. But the challenge of talking with the opposite gender, socializing, and striving after employment and success all resonate with what I’ve seen with both genders. As I’ve written about before, anxiety and inhibition are two defining characteristics of this age, and they feed each other. The more anxious you are, the more you are afraid to act as an agent in the world, so the more anxious you become about your situation, and so on. The article at The Argument, written by Lakshya Jain, ends by offering no solution or action items, and that’s where I’d like to pick up here. What can we do to encourage young people to break out of social isolation and inhibition? I believe young people need to cultivate the virtue of courage in order to lean into who they were created to be.
