Less in-person social interaction with peers among U.S. adolescents in the 21st century and links to loneliness

TLDR

Nationally representative data show that U.S. adolescents in the 2010s spend significantly less time in face‑to‑face peer interaction than earlier generations.

Abstract

In nationally representative samples of U.S. adolescents (age: 13–18) and entering college students, 1976–2017 ( N = 8.2 million), iGen adolescents in the 2010s (vs. previous generations) spent less time on in-person (face-to-face) social interaction with peers, including getting together or socializing with friends, going to parties, going out, dating, going to movies, and riding in cars for fun. College-bound high school seniors in 2016 (vs. the late 1980s) spent an hour less a day engaging in in-person social interaction, despite declines in paid work and little change in homework or extracurricular activity time. The results suggest that time displacement occurs at the cohort level, with in-person social interaction declining as digital media use increased, but not at the individual level, where in-person social interaction and social media use are positively correlated. Adolescents’ feelings of loneliness increased sharply after 2011. Adolescents low in in-person social interaction and high in social media use reported the most loneliness.