LONELINESS IN COLLEGE STUDENTS

SKYLA GORI

Abstract

Human beings by nature are meant to thrive on communication and connection with other beings around them. Loneliness occurs when there is an emotionally distressing, yearn for social relationships or unity that is not met. Little is known about the effect loneliness can have on college students’ psychological and physiological health. Research on loneliness suggests there may be a correlation between being lonely and a variety of factors such as social deficiency, depression, worthlessness, risk related behaviors. But there are a variety of intervention tactics that may be helpful to combat loneliness.

Loneliness

Human beings thrive off of their meaningful relationships with other people, as we are predisposed to social communication and bonding. When someone is lonely it usually suggests that they are not attaining the amount of attention, connection or interaction that they are yearning for. A state of loneliness is a negative downward slope leading to emotional, cognitive and social torment (Erzen & Çikrikci, 2018). Loneliness has many dimensions to it and people often downplay how serious it’s effects can be. Intimate/ emotional loneliness can occur when an individual does not have a romantic partner, relational loneliness can occur when an individual lacks social peers, family or familial support in general and collective loneliness can occur when an individual has no external, community support systems like faculty, colleagues, amongst other facets of social networking (Kearney, Zeligman, Brack & Payne, 2018).

College students in particular are extremely susceptible for high levels of loneliness. This is due to the fact that they are becoming their own person, leaving home where their family and friends are, and immersing themselves in a whole new experience for most likely the first time (Kearney, Zeligman, Brack & Payne, 2018). This is important because as said in the article ‘Rumination and Anxiety Mediate the Effect of Loneliness on Depressed Mood and Sleep Quality in College Students’ (2013), Loneliness influences how much a person thinks about negative thoughts resulting in a higher stress rate and anxiety levels and influences how much an individual experiences negative emotions leading to depressed moods and diminished quality of sleep (Zawadski, Graham & Gerin, 2013).

Prevalence of Loneliness in College Students

Loneliness, specifically in college students, is becoming a growing concern for this nation. A study examining suicide predictors, saw loneliness being associated with increased suicidal thoughts or behaviors. 47% of those who had a history of thoughts of harming themselves, “loneliness was the most frequently cited cause of suicidal ideation” (Chang, Sanna, Hirch & Jeglic, 2010). In 2017 the American College Health Association distributed a survey to 48,000 college students. 64% of students reported that they had felt “very lonely” in the past year. The survey also shined a light on other problems relating to loneliness. 69% reported feeling “very sad, 62% reported feeling “overwhelming anxiety”, 53% reported “things were hopeless”, 40% reported feeling “so depressed that it was difficult to function” and 12% had suicidal thoughts. As loneliness becomes more and more prevalent in college students; some universities are taking steps to design courses specifically for the lonely. For example, Yale University recently implemented a class that teaches how to live a happy life and 25% of the school’s undergraduate population are already enrolled in it and above 50% of Yale students make use of the mental health and counseling center on campus. (The Foundation for Art and Healing, 2020).

Social Deficiency

Researchers suggest one side effect of severe loneliness is social deficiency. A social deficit could be lacking in any one of the following items: basic communication skills, empathy, interpersonal skills or the ability to problem solve. The cause of diminished social interaction could very well be due to college students moving away from home and their safe social networks, leaving them lacking in companionship. Lonely individuals start ruminating and slowly begin to enter a dark place full of negative thoughts about themselves, and after a certain point it can lead to individuals having severe mistrust in others – resulting in more social deficiency. Along with mistrust, lonely individuals also score higher on tests measuring hostility. Experiencing these higher levels of hostility is bad enough for a non-lonely individual, but hostility with the combination of loneliness may increase the likelihood of depressed mood, lower self-evaluation and persistent pessimistic views (Zawadski, Graham & Gerin, 2013).

Having a heightened depressed state and lower self esteem are two things that people look out for, especially when starting friendships and relationships, and if they are both unstable that can be a deterrent to others. That may be why a vast majority of those who are lonely communicate online using social networking websites. Research has shown a positive correlation between social media use and loneliness because if users have a social deficit they are more likely to avoid face to face communication. But even when these lonely individuals decide to stray away from face to face interactions to heighten their online presence, it actually increases loneliness because it’s human nature to still desire in person social interaction (Rai & Gill, 2016). The greater use of social networking and decrease of face to face communication negatively impacts lonely individual’s social circles just to add insult to injury.

Effects of Loneliness on Depression and Worthlessness

Individuals do not need to be alone in order to feel lonely. Loneliness can also be a sign of one-sided relationships where individuals are left feeling unloved, misunderstood and feel as though their emotions do not matter or are considered invalid (Coplan, page 39, 2014). These negative emotions can manifest and soon turn into depression and worthlessness. The time young people go off to college coincides with the time period psychiatric disorders tend to emerge (Lamis, Ballard & Patel, 2014). Depression as defined in the DSM-5 is a mood disorder that brings on feelings of sadness, diminished interest in activities, fatigue, hopelessness and recurrent suicidal ideation or thoughts of death. In a meta-analysis study performed by Erzen and Çikrikci (2018), they found a positive and significant relationship between depression and loneliness. They found that in these young adults a significant factor on loneliness and depression was a sense of belonging. They suggested that puberty leaves teenagers and young adults prone to feelings that no one understands what they are going through and thus loneliness begins to form (Erzen & Çikrikci, 2018). Another factor of loneliness that pairs with depression is worthlessness. Worthlessness is a state in which an individual feels useless, meaningless and insubstantial.

Loneliness and Risk Related Behavior

Risk related behavior can be categorized as behaviors that put your health and/ or mental well being at danger, like illegal drug use, self-injury and suicide. When an individual leaves home to go to college, a multitude of things happen. The structure created by one’s parents almost instantaneously disappears, a large amount of pressure is put on these budding new adults to keep up the same responsibilities and while all that is happening they lose their home support system as well, leaving them lonely and vulnerable. This can lead to a decrease in mental well being and an overall feeling of emptiness, so college students begin using illegal drugs and copious amounts of alcohol as a maladaptive coping mechanism. Drug use can then lead to a variety of other harsh factors such as lower grades in school, the possibility of being caught – resulting in disenrollment or arrest, accidental overdose and the likelihood that the individual will gradually get into more potent and harmful drugs (Lamis, Ballard & Patel, 2014).

Self-injury is defined causing harm to one’s self with or without leading to a suicide attempt such as, cutting, burning, hitting or mutilating oneself in a way. Researchers have conducted tests that show a very large portion of college students are engaging in such behavior, after a study showed the prevalence of self-harm in one’s life time is 38% (Dellinger-Ness & Handler, 2007). A pattern found among those who do engage in self-injurious behavior is that these individuals feel they are unable to speak about their feelings. Self-harm acts as a coping mechanism for those who feel their voices are lost and in a time where relationships are disrupted (i.e., going off to college) prevalence rates will rise to counteract feelings of loneliness or social isolation (Dellinger-Ness & Handler, 2007). Suicide is one of the most common causes of death in young adults and college students. In 2014 suicide was the third leading cause of death in 15 to 24 year-olds. Researchers have become preoccupied searching for reasons the suicide rate is so high within this population and have found it is due to both depressive mood as well as suicidal ideation. Loneliness is one of the highest predictors of suicidal ideation and depressed mood thus also a predictor of suicide and risk related behavior (Lamis, Ballard & Patel, 2014).

Intervention and Combatting Loneliness

Loneliness is an extremely serious issue, and the first step in combatting loneliness is to recognize that it is a big deal and it’s not just an attention tactic or made up. Specialists in this field suggest that one of the first steps is to adjust social associations and connections between lonely people and others around them. Lonely people have been shown to react poorly in stressful situations and instead of digging down to the root of the problem, they internalize emotions and resort to a state of learned helplessness (Ponzetti, 1990). Being taught how to properly cope with stressful situations by adjusting personal reactions is a step in the right direction. Being mindful of one’s emotions can help alleviate or even eliminate detrimental interpersonal stressors, like creating a journal or joining a support group for lonely individuals.

Ponzetti (1990) suggests various ways loneliness can be prevented. He says the use of both cognitive and behavior focused coping should be implemented. Cognitive-focused coping can be used to help change underlying thoughts or beliefs about oneself (i.e., unrealistic beliefs, certain expectations, self-destructive thoughts) and behavioral-focused coping mechanisms can be used to acquire good interpersonal skills in order to rid the self of toxic emotions (i.e., worthlessness, self-blaming, etc.). Once these skills are implemented, it becomes a lot less difficult for lonely individuals to start subtly making connections with those around them.

Chang (2018) believed one of the most effective way to decrease loneliness was to increase optimism. They wanted to see if optimism or lack thereof could predict depressive behaviors and suicidal ideation. The researchers conducted a study with 457 college students and participants were then directed to take the UCLA Loneliness Scale, Life Orientation Test, Beck Depression Inventory and the Frequency of Suicidal Ideation Inventory. The results as seen in the figures below, indicated that “loneliness correlated positively with depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation… Optimism correlated negatively with depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation… Depressive symptoms correlated positively with suicidal ideation”. (Chang, Chang, Martos, Sallay, Lucas & Lee, 2017).

Discussion

High rates of self-injurious behavior in young adults is a serious matter that it is crucial that doctors and counselors consulting with college students should conduct thorough tests to make sure the individual is not self-harming in any way. The article by Dellinger-Ness (2007) shows it is evident that you don’t need history of abuse to injure oneself and each person counseled should get the right amount of care. Loneliness is indeed a factor in risk related behavior among young adults and should be taken very seriously considering the risks.

More research should be conducted in the future because there were rarely any demographics in the studies besides age and sex. Items like race, ethnicity or sexual orientation were not mentioned in the studies and could very well impact levels of loneliness. It would also be interesting to see how levels of loneliness differ around the world. Perhaps since in the United States we are considered an individualistic culture, we have extremely higher rates of loneliness that somewhere with a collectivistic culture, like China. That might possibly explain why interpersonal relationships are so poor for lonely people, but if that was true then everyone would be lonely. Perhaps further research could fill in some of the lost, yet very important information regarding this subject.

References

Campus Loneliness Fact Sheet. (2020, January 29). The Foundation for Art and Healing. Retrieved from https://artandhealing.org/campus-loneliness-fact-sheet/

Chang, E. C., Sanna, L. J., Hirsch, J. K., & Jeglic, E. L. (2010). Loneliness and negative life events as predictors of hopelessness and suicidal behaviors in hispanics: evidence for a diathesis-stress model. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 66(12), 1242–1253. doi: 10.1002/jclp.20721

Chang, E. C., Chang, O. D., Martos, T., Sallay, V., Li, X., Lucas, A. G., & Lee, J. (2017). Does optimism weaken the negative effects of being lonely on suicide risk? Death Studies, 42(1), 63–68. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2017.1332115

Coplan, R. J. (2014). The handbook of solitude: psychological perspectives on social isolation, social withdrawal, and being alone. 39-46. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.

Dellinger-Ness, L. A., & Handler, L. (2007). Self-Injury, Gender, and Loneliness Among College Students. Journal of College Counseling, 10(2), 142–152. doi: 10.1002/j.2161-1882.2007.tb00014.x

Erzen, E., & Çikrikci, Ö. (2018). The effect of loneliness on depression: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 64(5), 427–435. doi: 10.1177/0020764018776349

Kearney, M. A., Zeligman, M., Brack, J. L., & Payne, E. (2018). Trauma and Dissociation: Predictors of Loneliness in Students at an Urban University. Journal of College Counseling, 21(2), 165–179. doi: 10.1002/jocc.12095

Lamis, D. A., Ballard, E. D., & Patel, A. B. (2014). Loneliness and Suicidal Ideation in Drug-Using College Students. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 44(6), 629–640. doi: 10.1111/sltb.12095

Ponzetti, J. J. (1990). Loneliness among College Students. Family Relations, 39(3), 336. doi: 10.2307/584881

Rai, K., Gill, G. (2016). Loneliness in relation to social networking site usage among university students. Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing, 7(5), 518-521. ISSN-p-2229-5356,e-2321-3698

Zawadski, M. J., Graham, J. E., & Gerin, W. (2013). Do rumination and anxiety mediate the effect of loneliness on depressed mood and sleep quality? PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi: 10.1037/e556952013-013

Skyla Gori '21

Skyla is a senior at Manhattanville graduating in May 2021 with a major in psychology and a minor in sociology. She has always been passionate about psychological and sociological concepts and in this paper she merged her two worlds.