If you went looking for young adult loneliness statistics because a headline stopped you mid-scroll, here is the number: nearly half. A study published in February 2026 by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found that among 18-to-24-year-olds surveyed across eight countries, close to one in two reported feeling lonely — compared with about 30 per cent of adults aged 55 and over. It is, by a wide margin, the loneliest age group the study measured.
The study, in plain numbers
Led by Salma Abdalla at the WashU School of Public Health, with senior author Sandro Galea, the research analysed nationally representative survey data from 7,997 adults across Brazil, France, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Turkey and the United States — roughly 1,000 respondents per country, fielded between November 2023 and February 2024 and translated with rigorous review to keep the questions consistent across languages. It was published on 5 February 2026 in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, titled “Loneliness, Depression and Generalized Anxiety Across Eight Countries.”
Across all eight countries and every age group, close to four in ten adults reported loneliness. Split the data by age and the pattern is stark: it climbs to nearly half among 18-to-24-year-olds and eases steadily from there, settling around 30 per cent for the 55-plus group. Women, people with lower income or education, unmarried people and city dwellers all reported higher rates too.
The mental-health link is what makes the number more than a headline. People who reported loneliness had almost three times the odds of meeting the screening criteria for depression, and nearly four times the odds for generalised anxiety — a pattern that held across all eight countries despite very different baseline rates, from 3.4 per cent depression prevalence in India to 15.8 per cent in Brazil. “Loneliness is not a marginal issue,” Abdalla said. “It is common across countries and strongly linked to serious mental health outcomes.” Galea put the policy implication plainly: “Strengthening social connection should be central to mental health policy and treatment efforts.”
Why the most connected generation reports the least connection
The obvious question is how the generation that grew up with a phone in hand and more ways to reach another person than any generation before it ends up the loneliest one measured.
Part of the answer is that being reachable and being together are not the same thing, and the data shows the second one quietly shrinking. Psychologists Jean Twenge and Brian Spitzberg tracked the American Time Use Survey, a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of more than 190,000 people, and found that by 2017, Americans aged 15 to 25 were spending 21 to 23 fewer minutes a day in non-digital social interaction than the same age group did in 2003 — roughly 140 fewer hours a year of unmediated time with another person. Published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology in 2020, the study found the decline for the population as a whole was smaller, at 10 to 11 minutes a day, meaning young adults absorbed most of the drop.
None of that time disappeared. It moved onto a screen. But a message thread is not a conversation, and a like is not company. The eight-country study's finding that young, urban, hyper-connected adults report the most loneliness of any group sits neatly alongside Twenge and Spitzberg's finding that this is also the group that has lost the most actual in-person time with each other since 2003.
It shows up here too
Australia is not exempt. A 2025 analysis of the long-running HILDA survey by Michelle Lim and Ben Smith at the University of Sydney found 43 per cent of Australians aged 15 to 25 are lonely — a figure that, allowing for the slightly different age band, sits close to the eight-country study's near-50-per-cent finding for 18-to-24-year-olds worldwide. Two studies, two different survey designs, on two different continents, landing on roughly the same number for the same generation.
What actually helps
None of this gets solved by one more app, or one more group chat left on read. What breaks a lonely stretch is smaller than that: an actual hour, with an actual person, nothing mediating it. That is the idea behind Flat White — one coffee, one person, an hour, arranged so you are not the one who has to do the organising.
Meet one person. Over coffee. On purpose.
Australia’s opening city-by-city. Join the waitlist at joinflatwhite.com →