Why young adults with plenty of friends are still lonely

A new national study reveals that many young adults feel lonely even while spending plenty of time with friends.

Researchers say this mix of connection and disconnection shows up across a survey of nearly 5,000 Americans.

The team tracked people from late teens into older age to see how their social lives line up with their feelings.

The research was focused on young adults in the United States, especially college educated women, who report active friendships yet still sense something is missing.

Young adults feel lonely with friends

Participants answered questions about how many friends they had, how often they saw them, and how supported they felt.

Many young adults said they were satisfied with their friendships and confident they could make new ones – even as they also reported feeling lonely.

The researchers looked at both social wellbeing, an overall sense of connection and support in close relationships, and feelings of loneliness and disconnection.

That choice helped them show that people can rate their friendships as strong while still describing an inner sense of social strain.

Social lives of Americans

The work was led by Jeffrey A. Hall, professor and chair of communication studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence (KU).

Professor Hall studies how people build, maintain, and make sense of relationships in everyday life.

The researchers surveyed 4,812 adults between the ages of 18 and 95 across the United States.

Participants named up to seven friends, rated how connected and supported they felt, and reported recent life changes such as moving, starting jobs, or ending relationships.

From these answers, the researchers created four patterns of social health using cluster analysis.

The rise of social ambivalence

One pattern, which included about 61 percent of survey respondents, combined high levels of connection and support with moderate loneliness and disconnection. The experts refer to this combination as social ambivalence.

People in this ambivalent group reported many friends, frequent social contact, and friends who celebrated their good news.

At the same time, they were more likely to say that maintaining close relationships felt difficult and that they wished for more time with friends.

Many members of the ambivalent group were young adults with more education who had gone through several major life changes in the past year, such as moving cities or graduating.

This snapshot fits with the idea of emerging adulthood, a stage in the late teens and twenties when people experiment with work, love, and identity before settling into longer term roles.

Why young adults feel lonely

The study links this turbulence to ontological security, a sense of stability and continuity in daily life that helps people feel grounded.

When routines shift again and again, that underlying security is harder to build, even if friends are present and supportive.

“When our lives, including our social lives, are more predictable, we tend to feel more secure and purposeful,” said Professor Hall.

He noted that since the 1990s many young adults have delayed milestones like buying homes, marrying, or having children. This stretches out the years when life feels unsettled.

The researchers connect this idea to classic work in sociology that describes how stable routines give people a framework for answering basic questions about who they are and where they fit.

When almost every term at school, contract at work, or living situation feels temporary, that basic sense of continuity is easier to shake.

Who lands in the ambivalent group

Compared with other clusters, the ambivalent group was more likely to include women who were dating, living through several life transitions, and reporting moderate levels of stress. 

They were also less likely to say that making new friends was hard, and more likely to report that friends shared in their successes.

Older adults in the sample showed a different pattern. They tended to have smaller but more stable networks, fewer recent life changes, lower stress, and the lowest levels of loneliness and disconnection.

A fourth group, much smaller in size, combined high loneliness with low connection and support.

These participants were more likely to have less formal education, high stress, and a history of losing touch with friends, pointing to a different kind of risk than the tension seen in the ambivalent group.

Loneliness in a time of transition

The findings line up with a wider body of work showing that loneliness is not limited to old age. A large German analysis found that loneliness can peak in young adulthood and again in very old age, with calmer periods in between.

Public health leaders are also paying close attention. The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that widespread loneliness and isolation now pose a serious public health threat, linking disconnection to higher risks of mental and physical illness.

In this context, the Kansas team’s work suggests that many young adults are not lacking social opportunity but struggling to find stable, lasting forms of closeness during years of rapid change.

Supporting young adults

Loneliness may signal a desire for routines and commitments that match the busy social lives they already have.

For young people, that perspective can be quietly reassuring. Treating loneliness as a cue to seek depth, not as proof that they are failing socially, may change how they respond to those uneasy evenings.

The findings point to a few practical steps for families and clinicians.

Supporting young adults as they carve out time for deep friendships, establish steady weekly routines, and find places where relationships can take root may strengthen both their connections and their sense of self as they move into adulthood.

The study is published in the journal PLOS One.

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