Young People Lonelier Than Ever, Studies Show

                Several recent studies have revealed that people are feeling lonelier than in the past. This is especially true of youth and young adults under age 25. There is mounting evidence that younger folks, particularly in the wealthy West, are lonelier than they were in the past.

                For example, George Mason University conducted a study of 1,200 people in the United States and found that one in three of those polled under the age of 25 frequently felt lonely, as compared to only 11% of those older than 65. To many of us, this seems counterintuitive. Yet, another study, conducted in the United Kingdom, revealed that 40% of respondents between the ages of 16 and 24 felt lonely “often or very often,” as opposed to 27% of adults over 75.

                Stephanie Cacioppo, director of the Brain Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine, stated in an email that: "Our research shows that loneliness is a subjective mental state rather than an age-related symptom. Loneliness does not discriminate. Everyone is at risk."

                Thank goodness loneliness doesn’t discriminate, or we’d have to subject it to lawsuits and fines! That said, why would today’s youth, with constant access and exposure to the internet, smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and a host of other social media platforms, be so much lonelier than those in days of yore? Ironically, perhaps because they have constant access and exposure to the internet, smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and a host of other social media platforms…but often not to both mom and dad, religious and community groups, a Bible, unrevised histories of their nations and traditions, and a hammock on the family homestead, free of all electronic devices and mindless interruptions, affording them the opportunity to truly connect…to the land, to their ancestors, and to their God…on a meaningful level.

                Snapchatting nudes, tweeting out banalities, nose stuck in their phones as they walk by other humans without seeing or acknowledging them, these youth experience others—and life in general-- as a sort of semi-pointless video game. Technological advances notwithstanding, this is no replacement for, for example, living on the family farm, slopping the hogs, swimming with the neighbor kids in the creek that runs through the back 40, listening to FDR give a fireside chat on the radio, and playing cards or a board game in the evening with your extended family at the dining room table. It. Just. Isn’t. 

                Leftists have done everything in their power to indoctrinate kids into believing that their country is bad, or at best unexceptional, but also that there is no power higher than government. They tell some of them that they are intrinsically racist and bigoted, and others that they are victims…and that neither group can do anything about it. And then they tell them that the world will end soon due to man-caused “climate change,” as if the climate was uniformly stagnant and stable prior to the industrial revolution.

                And then they wonder why many are lonely, lost and depressed.

                Ironically, today’s social media too often lead to loneliness and anti-social behavior, just as “progressive” policies and dogma eventually lead to hopelessness and despair.