According to a global survey, about 33 percent of adults experienced feelings of loneliness worldwide. Brazil had the highest percentage of people experiencing this, with 50 percent of respondents declaring that they felt lonely either often, always, or sometimes. Turkey, India, and Saudi Arabia followed, with 43 percent to 46 percent of respondents having experienced loneliness at least sometimes. On the contrary, the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, and Russia registered the largest share of interviewees which did not feel lonely.

Coping with loneliness during the pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly cut off people from all over the world from their social life, and the lack of companionship has been a difficult situation for many to cope with. In the United States, people who experienced lack of company were, unsurprisingly, individuals living alone, and unemployed, disabled, or unemployed people. In relation to mental health, Americans who reported more symptoms of depression were by far more likely to feel lonely.

Impact of mental health According to a survey conducted in 2021 among G7 countries, about seven in 10 people experienced a worsening of their psychological health during the pandemic. A study on clinician-reported changes in selected health behaviors in the United States showed that during the pandemic patients have suffered more from feelings of loneliness, depression or anxiety, and burnout. Also nutrition and other habits have been impacted. The study reported an increase in alcohol consumption, smoking cigarettes, poor nutrition, and use of other substances.

Loneliness outcomes for disabled people in England aged 16 years and over, with analysis by age, sex, impairment severity and region using the Community Life Survey (CLS) data.

In the past months, many countries have adopted varying degrees of lockdown restrictions to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. According to the existing literature, some consequences of lockdown restrictions on people’s lives are beginning to emerge. To inform policies for the current and/or future pandemics, particularly those involving lockdown restrictions, this study adopted a data-driven Machine Learning approach to uncover the short-term effects of lockdown on people’s physical and mental health. An online questionnaire launched on 17 April 2020 was completed by 2,276 people from 66 countries. Focusing on the UK sample (N=382), 10 aggregated variables representing participant’s living environment, physical and mental health were used to train a RandomForest model to predict the week of survey completion. Using an index of importance to identify the best predictor among the 10 variables, self perceived loneliness was identified as the most influential variable. Subsequent statistical analysis showed a significant U-shaped curve for loneliness levels, with a decrease during the 4th and 5th lockdown weeks. The same pattern was replicated in the Greek sample (N = 129). This suggests that for the very first period of time, the adopted lockdown measures affected people’s evaluation of their social support leading to a decreased sense of loneliness.

This statistic shows the percentage of people engaging in specific coping behaviors when they feel lonely or socially isolated in the U.S. as of 2018. Among those reporting loneliness and social isolation, 78 percent indicated that they almost always or sometimes distract themselves with TV, computer, or video games when they are feeling lonely.

FIG-Loneliness (FIne-Grained Loneliness) is a dataset collected by using Reddit posts in two young adult-focused forums and two loneliness related forums consisting of a diverse age group. Annotations by trained human annotators for binary and fine-grained loneliness classifications of the posts are provided.

Estimates of loneliness and personal well-being during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic by country, region, county and local and unitary authorities. This dataset also includes outputs from regression models which consider the personal characteristics significantly associated with levels of loneliness and well-being both during and prior to the pandemic affecting the UK.

A total of 359 Chinese college students were recruited in this study (females = 216; mean age = 19.56; SD = 1.61).

This is the original unedited data set for the manuscript "The Role of Trait Mindfulness in the Association between Loneliness and Psychological Distress".

The survey includes:

Demographics The University of California Los Angeles Loneliness Scale–Version 3 (UCLA-LS; Russell, 1996) The Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire–Short Form (FFMQ-SF; Bohlmeijer et al., 2011) The 21-item Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) Questions regarding mindfulness and meditation practice Questions regarding relationships and home location and household composition Questions regarding the impact of COVID-19 measures on employment.

References Bohlmeijer, E., ten Klooster, P. M., Fledderus, M., Veehof, M., & Baer, R. (2011). Psychometric properties of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire in depressed adults and development of a short form. Assessment, 18(3), 308-320. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191111408231 Lovibond, S. H., & Lovibond, P. F. (1995). Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (2nd ed.). Psychology Foundation. Russell, D. W. (1996). UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3): Reliability, validity, and factor structure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66(1), 20-40. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa6601_2

Percentage of persons aged 15 years and over by frequency with which they feel lonely, by gender, for Canada, regions and provinces.

A simple random sampling technique, which is among the random sampling techniques, was used in the sampling stage. We sent an invitation to more than 1500 people in Istanbul. Interested participants could click on the link in the invitation to be directed to the survey’s website. To test our hypotheses, 1039 people residing within the borders of Istanbul province participated in this research. However, due to the incomplete and careless filling of the questionnaires by the participants, 61 people were excluded from the data analysis, and 978 people were analyzed.

Wellbeing data and social network information entered by participants via a smartphone app, over 2 weeks. Surveys taken at beginning, mid and end of 2 weeks that assess psychometrics. Data connected via an anonymised user id. All data were collected under a study approved by the Nottingham Trent University psychology research ethics committee, with permission from participants to share anonymised data.

Percentage of persons aged 15 years and over by frequency with which they feel lonely, by gender and other selected sociodemographic characteristics: age group; immigrant status; visible minority group; Indigenous identity; persons with a disability, difficulty or long-term condition; LGBTQ2+ people; highest certificate, diploma or degree; main activity; and urban and rural areas.

Young adults between the ages of 18-24 are the loneliest age-group in the UK and other Western countries yet little is known about the causes and experiences of their loneliness. In particular, young adults of lower socio-economic status (SES) living in the most deprived areas are loneliest in the United Kingdom. Therefore, the aim of the data collected included exploring the causes and experiences of loneliness in young adults with these qualities and circumstances from their own perspective (part 1). The data also includes exploration of how these young adults conceptualise and experience their neighbourhood and how they impact upon their loneliness and social connectedness (part 2). This is qualitative data collected from forty-eight participants between June and August 2019 from 48 participants. A recruitment agency was employed to access the quota sample required. Participants were living in/recruited from four of the most deprived boroughs of London, UK: Newham (n = 16), Hackney (n = 16), Tower Hamlets (n = 16), and Barking & Dagenham (n = 16). There were two parts to the study. Part 1 included the free association task, in which participants were first presented with a piece of paper that contained a grid of four empty boxes and asked to express what they associated with “the experience of loneliness” by way of images and/or words. They were further instructed to elaborate one image/idea per box. After completion of the free association task, participants were asked to elaborate on the content of each box, in turn, in an interview. This started with “can we talk about what you have put in box 1, please?” Prompts such as “can you tell me more about that?” were used to ensure thoughts and feelings about the experience of loneliness were fully explored and emerged naturalistically without injection of content via researcher questioning. The interviews lasted for an average of 60 min. Most interviews took place at the participants’ homes though some at a local café, park or similar places if home was not an option. As for part 2, which was immediately after part 1, participants were asked to write or draw one place in their neighbourhood where they feel most socially connected and one where they feel most lonely. Beneath each of the two places they were further instructed to write what it is about that place that makes them feel the way they do. Participants were then asked to elaborate on the content of the association they had produced in an interview. This began with “can we talk about what you’ve put in box one (for the most socially connected place), please?” Prompts including “can you tell me more about that?” and “how does that make you feel in this space?” were used to ensure respondents’ thoughts and feelings about their chosen places were fully explored and emerged naturalistically without input from the researcher questioning. The same process ensued for the second box asking about the loneliest place. Each interview lasted between 20 and 30 minutes. The corresponding image/output for each participant for both parts 1 and 2 is presented.

Loneliness has been associated with multiple negative outcomes. But what contributes to loneliness in the first place? Drawing from the literature on the importance of self-regulatory ability for successful social functioning, the present research explored the role of low self-control as a factor leading to loneliness. A set of four studies (and three additional studies in Supplementary Online Materials) using cross-sectional, experimental, daily diary, and experience sampling methods showed that lower selfcontrol is associated with higher loneliness at both trait and state levels. Why does low self-control contribute to loneliness? Self-control failures that have negative implications for others lead to higher risks for being ostracized by others, which predicts increased feelings of loneliness over time. These results suggest that low self-control, which is often associated with negative intrapersonal outcomes, can have important interpersonal consequences by evoking ostracism, and consequently, loneliness.

A 2022 survey conducted in 16 countries found that feelings of loneliness tend to decrease with age. That year, nearly 60 percent of young adults between 18 and 24 years reported negative effects on wellbeing from feelings of loneliness, while around 22 percent of respondents aged 65 and older reported the same. This statistic shows the percentage of people worldwide who reported negative effects on wellbeing from feelings of loneliness in 2022, by age group.

The dataset includes scores for perceived loneliness (3-item UCLA scale) and predictors of loneliness, including summary scores of sociodemographic, lifestyles, self-rated health status questionnaires and cognitive constructs about meaning in life in their several dimensions. Data comprises more than 2000 responses to questionnaires from the BBHI study (https://bbhi.cat/en/), a longitudinal cohort to study potential determinants of healthy ageing. The dataset includes all data entries and statistical code in R necessary to totally reproduce the results and figures in the study: "Meaning in life: a major predictive factor for loneliness comparable to health status and social connectedness "

Judged by the sheer amount of global media coverage, loneliness rates seem to be an increasingly urgent societal concern. From the late 1970s onward, the life experiences of emerging adults have been changing massively due to societal developments such as increased fragmentation of social relationships, greater mobility opportunities, and changes in communication due to technological innovations. These societal developments might have coincided with an increase in loneliness in emerging adults. In the present preregistered cross-temporal meta-analysis, we examine whether loneliness levels in emerging adults have changed over the last 43 years. Our analysis is based on 449 means from 345 studies with 437 independent samples and a total of 124,855 emerging adults who completed the UCLA loneliness scale between 1976 and 2019. Averaged across all studies, loneliness levels linearly increased with increasing calendar year (beta = 0.224, 95% CI [0.138, 0.309]). This increase corresponds to 0.56 standard deviations on the UCLA loneliness scale over the 43-year period of study. Overall, the results imply that loneliness can be a rising concern in emerging adulthood. Although the frequently-used term “loneliness epidemic” seems exaggerated, emerging adults should therefore not be overlooked when designing interventions against loneliness.