Almost a quarter of the world feels lonely, young adults most of all

The loneliest group was not the oldest. It was young adults aged 19 to 29, at 27%, compared with 17% of people aged 65 and over.

Across 142 countries, roughly a quarter of people aged fifteen and over told Gallup they felt very or fairly lonely. What makes this survey so useful is not only its size but who it found at the sharp end. The loneliest group was not the oldest. It was young adults aged nineteen to twenty-nine, at 27 percent, against 17 percent of people aged sixty-five and over.

That reversal is one of the most stubbornly misunderstood facts about loneliness. The stock image is an elderly person alone at a window. The reality, in this data and others, is a young adult surrounded by contacts and short of connection. The years that are supposed to be socially rich, the leaving-home, finding-work, finding-a-partner years, have become for many the loneliest of all.

There are plausible reasons, though the survey measures the feeling rather than the cause. Young adulthood now involves more moving, more precarious work, more time online and less of the settled, in-person routine that turns acquaintances into friends. A phone full of people you could message is not the same as a few who would notice if you disappeared, and that gap is exactly what loneliness names.

If you are young and lonely and had assumed you were the exception, this number is permission to stop blaming yourself. More than one in four of your peers would recognise the feeling. The Tribe is being built with that generation in mind, as somewhere the aim is to be known by a few real people rather than seen by many. It is early, and we would rather you helped build it than waited. When something is this widely shared, the first step is simply naming it out loud.