Greater loneliness in young people during lockdown

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In April last year, we developed our first CovidLife survey. Our aim was to understand mental health and wellbeing. Since then we've expanded and have created 7 different surveys to understand how people have been feeling and coping throughout the pandemic.

Many people are concerned about loneliness during the pandemic. Thanks to over 20,000 volunteers across our CovidLife and TeenCovidLife surveys we've been able to look at data to understand the diffierences between loneliness in adults compared to young people. We found that younger people reported more loneliness than older people across the pandemic. 

In both adults and young people, we found that loneliness peaked during the first lockdown. However, for young people this was more severe, as they showed a greater increase in loneliness during this time.

Support has been vital to protect against loneliness. We found that at each stage of lockdown, a different type of social support had the biggest effect on loneliness. Peer support was most protective before lockdown, while family support was most protective during lockdown. However, the most important type of social support after lockdown was school support. 

To read a full report of our results, take a look the document below:

We also made an infographic of the results, which you can see to the right. The larger pdf version is available below:

Please note: This is ongoing analysis and the numbers presented here may not be final.

Thank you to all of the TeenCovidLife volunteers who've taken part in our surveys!  None of this research would be possible without your help.

If you're aged 12-17 and living in Scotland, you can take part in our latest survey. If you'd like to take part you can sign up using the link below.

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