Richard Hogan: Teenage girls are the loneliest group in the world — how can we solve this?

Richard Hogan: "When parents sit down with me and ask “how do we get her off the phone?”, the question I have for them is “if she wasn’t on the phone what would she be doing?” There is often a profound silence as parents ponder the answer to that question."

Teenage girls are the loneliest group in the world, according to a new World Health Organization report.

The research was designed to gain an insight into which groups of people are lonely and how to combat the problem.

Loneliness can have a serious deleterious impact on health, and can cause not only mental health problems but put people at risk of early death. Some studies suggest that loneliness can be equated to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

The WHO found that there is an epidemic of loneliness among teenage girls. But the study did not illuminate anything new. 

If you are the parent of a teenager or you work with teenagers in various ways, you will hear them talk about their lives and how isolated they are.

It is the easy thing to do — blame technology for this worrying trend of loneliness.

But we have to look at ourselves as a society and ask how are we going about the business of engaging teenagers so that they feel connected to their community and peers.

What are we going to do to get them out of their room and connected to various activities and social groups?

I sit with teenagers every day, and I hear both teenage boys and girls delineate a very lonely existence.

They don’t feel like they have made a solid group of friends — the summer can be particularly brutal as they have no one to call for. 

Parents, too, describe their worry about their child that is living in their house, without the noise of friends driving them mad.

When parents sit down with me and ask “how do we get her off the phone?”, the question I have for them is “if she wasn’t on the phone what would she be doing?” 

There is often a profound silence as parents ponder the answer to that question.

It is an uncomfortable truth to realise you might have been somewhat complicit in your child’s narrowing world. That is not about blame but about warning any parent reading this with a young child.

Parents often describe to me how they allowed their child to quit activities they got bored with easily, the friendship groups they didn’t promote, the different hobbies they didn’t support or help them pursue. 

The wider your child’s activities at a young age, the wider the friendship group and also the less likely it is that they will be at home in their room on their own.

When I was a kid, the room wasn’t an incredibly alluring place. I had my records, and books, so I spent many days listening to various music I was into and reading novels that excited me. But my whole social world wasn’t there at my fingertips.

I have not met any teenager that has sat with me and told me they love being on their own. In fact, I have heard the opposite — teenagers struggling to understand what to do with the boredom of their lives.

Richard Hogan: "What are we going to do to get them out of their room and connected to various activities and social groups?"

One aspect I have noticed in my conversations with teenagers is how they feel they don’t have the skills to make small talk. They find it excruciatingly painful. What do we do when we have a fear? We generally tend to avoid.

When I ask about ordering in restaurants, they nearly always say they would never do it.

As parents, we should never be complicit in that deficit developing in our children. My youngest daughter will ask me from time to time to order for her, and I reply by saying “you have to tell the waiter yourself”, and she does. Slowly building her confidence one order at a time.

I work in schools a lot and I hear of this new trend that students will not come in to school if their best friend isn’t in. That is very worrying, their confidence is so low that without a friend they can’t manage school life or simply talk with other people. 

We are witnessing the narrowing of our children’s confidence, and we must push back.

Of course, technology is in the mix here. The paradox of the phone has disrupted communication. The very thing that was designed to connect everyone is the thing causing global disconnection. 

The ubiquitous beauty standards it promotes and the chilling accuracy of the algorithm to deliver information it knows will arouse a teenage girl’s mind is terrifying, and one of the main reasons they are so unhappy.

Everything in a teenager’s mind is designed for connection to their peers, and brain regions associated with peer feedback are more sensitive at this time than any other time in our long lives.

So, what’s the answer? Well, we have to do better by our teenagers:

• We have to promote healthier, inclusive environments that actively encourage them to join groups at a young age.
• We have to teach them social skills, so that they are not frightened of going to school and talking with people.
• We also have to embed
  technology-free times in the day so that they come out of the room and engage with the family.

This is a serious health issue, and the answer is not simply located at the door of big tech. Although, it does need regulating, and our children need protecting from the content sent to them to consume on a minute-by-minute basis.

The research is clear, our teenagers are not having a good time.

Childhood has been hijacked and it’s time we got it back for our children.