
One in five millennials are lonely and have 'no friends' - laurex
https://nypost.com/2019/08/02/1-in-5-millennials-are-lonely-and-have-no-friends-survey/
======
lawlorino
> “Here’s the bottom line: Using less social media than you normally would
> leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness,” says
> study author Melissa Hunt.

Maybe their words were taken out of context, but the study this refers to was
done on a group of undergraduates [0] so besides it being, in my opinion, an
overly simplistic solution, I'd be hesitant to draw this out to the wider
population. This is especially apparent when looking at the YouGov poll stats
where there's clearly a lot of different reasons why people feel they cannot
make friends. This is not to say that overuse of social media is not
problematic.

I'd be interested to see how this varies by country - loneliness is something
I've struggled with a lot in my life as I've moved city/country many times and
never lived in the US. I've found each place differs a lot in how easy or
difficult it is to make friends and acquaintances, although this could be
because I'm at different stages in my life when I've moved.

[0]
[https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10...](https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751?journalCode=jscp&)

