If Loneliness Was a Game, Our Young Men Would Be Winning

The loneliness epidemic encompasses the globe, but especially American men. Aggregated Gallup data from 2023 and 2024 reveals 25% of US men aged 15 to 34 reported feeling lonely a lot during the previous day, which is significantly higher than the national average. About 18% of Americans overall reported the same—a rate that also applies to US women in the 15-34 age bracket. US men, who also reported higher rates of stress and worry than the national average, are also more likely to feel lonely than their counterparts in 38 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries. Across those countries, a median 15% of men aged 15 to 34 reported feeling lonely a lot during the previous day.

Across all ages in OECD countries, the median rate was just 16%. For women over 55, it was 19%. US women aged 35 to 54 had an elevated rate of 20%, compared with 15% for men their age. But slightly younger men in the US were revealed as among the loneliest groups in the West, according to Gallup. In Turkey, 29% of young men reported feeling lonely a lot during the previous day, but that's similar to the national average. As Axios puts it, "Nowhere in the world are young men as lonely in comparison to other people in their country as they are in the US." In an interview with the Washington Post, Harvard researcher Richard Weissbourd suggests the findings are "a sign of societal failure ... like we're not taking care of each other." (More loneliness stories.)