In September, a Reddit user identifying themselves as a 25-year-old man turned to the r/ForeverAlone subreddit with a question: How do you deal with touch starvation? He used to be worried about missing out on sex, but now he just misses hugs. I don’t really hug family either anymore.
Some days, I feel so desperate for a hug with someone I love.” On another thread, a user identifying as a 20-year-old woman took to the platform to ask if anyone else had experienced university as one of the loneliest times in their lives. Around the world, young people, according to the 2025 World Health Organization Social Connection Commission report, “feel the loneliest”. Between 17 and 21% of 13-to-29-year-olds report feeling lonely, a greater proportion than any other age group, the report found.
Another study, based on a survey of more than 1 million young people from 38 countries, found that youth loneliness had increased in many regions between 2002 and 2022. From Germany to Australia to the UK, studies are showing an uptick in loneliness and social isolation among teenagers and young adults. That much of the world has produced a generation in which so many regularly feel unable to meet their needs for social connection is a curiosity which has propelled years of work for Dr Michelle Lim.
The act of learning to be one human among many has always been a lonely, discombobulating exercise in parts, she says. But in her new book, The Lonely Generation, the loneliness researcher and clinical psychologist examines exactly what has happened over this century to make many young people even lonelier. In short, she writes, “It must be said that the nature of childhood has changed dramatically over the past few decades.” The list of aggravating factors Lim identifies is long: our hyper-competitive education culture, digital technology, the long tail of Covid (“they’re grieving”), the shift towards smaller families, the decline of third spaces, the high cost of living, hybrid working, hybrid learning, the decline of religion, and the rise of automation which means a trip to the supermarket can be conducted entirely without speaking to another human.
Young people, she argues, are being offered fewer and fewer opportunities to form meaningful connections. Alongside her work as a psychologist and researcher, she leads the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health’s Social Health and Wellbeing Group, is CEO of the Australian Ending Loneliness Together campaign, is on a loneliness advisory panel to the World Health Organization and in 2020 cofounded and led the Global Initiative on Loneliness and Connection, which has since expanded to six continents. In The Lonely Generation, she seeks to dispel myths around loneliness and expound on its many individual and societal consequences.
But it is in diagnosing the cause of the “crisis” levels of youth loneliness that she spends the most time. And the first among the culprits she identifies is education. And this focus entails “hidden costs”.
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