One in three Australians feel lonely, but most don't talk about it because they're concerned about how others will respond. That's one of the key findings in the first report of its kind into loneliness which shows younger and middle-aged Australians appear to experience it most. The study by the organisation Ending Loneliness Together has been compiled by Doctor Michelle Lim, who says the findings were unexpected.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 We do know that young people 18 to 24 and those age 45 to 54 are actually reporting
00:07 the highest levels of loneliness, which is not really what we would expect.
00:10 But again, this is a clear demonstration of how loneliness is very different from being
00:14 alone.
00:15 But, you know, the reasons of why they might be lonely could be quite different.
00:20 Loneliness is a subjective feeling where you feel like your relationships do not meet your
00:24 current social needs.
00:26 So you might be around people, you might actually have lots of interaction, but you still feel
00:30 perhaps that you're not, you're actually not understood.
00:35 Perhaps you're actually feeling that you have no one to turn to or to talk to.
00:39 So it's a really distressing feeling that we're talking about here.
00:42 So for this particular report, what we did find was that young people actually reported
00:47 a higher level of social media addiction.
00:49 Now this is very different from frequency.
00:52 So it's not about amount they use, but actually really how they use it.
00:56 We don't actually know if that's actually the definite cause, but it's what we call
00:59 association.
01:01 So that's one of the many causes for young people.
01:05 So we do have this year Australia's inaugural Loneliness Awareness Week.
01:08 It's really important that people actually find out what loneliness is and what it's
01:13 not, and how to get help and how to actually speak about it.
01:16 And if you actually do know that someone who is lonely and you are trying to help them,
01:20 there's some resources on our website that they can actually go to to try to actually
01:25 talk to and reconnect with people who might need the help.
01:28 And remembering that it's people who feel lonely are incredibly feeling ashamed about
01:34 it and they're actually trying to conceal it.
01:36 So it's really important for us to learn those steps to actually make people feel safe and
01:39 comfortable to talk about their loneliness.
01:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]