The development of adolescents' loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of peer status and contact with friends

Sofie J Lorijn; Lydia Laninga-Wijnen; Maaike C Engels; Gerine M A Lodder; René Veenstra

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0286085

The development of adolescents' loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of peer status and contact with friends

PLoS One. 2023 May 26;18(5):e0286085. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286085. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Sofie J Lorijn¹, Lydia Laninga-Wijnen², Maaike C Engels³, Gerine M A Lodder⁴, René Veenstra¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Sociology, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
² Department of Developmental Psychology, INVEST Flagship, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
³ Department of Educational Support and Innovation, Center for Information Technology, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
⁴ Department of Developmental Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.

Abstract

The COVID-19 measures raised societal concerns about increases in adolescents' loneliness. This study examined trajectories of adolescents' loneliness during the pandemic, and whether trajectories varied across students with different types of peer status and contact with friends. We followed 512 Dutch students (Mage = 11.26, SD = 0.53; 53.1% girls) from before the pandemic (Jan/Feb 2020), over the first lockdown (March-May 2020, measured retrospectively), until the relaxation of measures (Oct/Nov 2020). Latent Growth Curve Analyses (LGCA) showed that average levels of loneliness declined. Multi-group LGCA showed that loneliness declined mostly for students with a victimized or rejected peer status, which suggests that students with a low peer status prior to the lockdown may have found temporary relief from negative peer experiences at school. Students who kept all-round contact with friends during the lockdown declined in loneliness, whereas students who had little contact or who did not (video) call friends did not.

Copyright: © 2023 Lorijn et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adolescent Behavior*
COVID-19* / epidemiology
Communicable Disease Control
Female
Friends
Humans
Loneliness
Male
Pandemics
Peer Group
Retrospective Studies

Grants and funding

This data collection is made possible by a grant awarded to René Veenstra, Herman van de Werfhorst, Jan Kornelis Dijkstra, Thijs Bol, and Sara Geven (2018) for the project ‘Peer Relations in the Transition from Primary to Secondary school: Social, Behavioral and Academic Aspects of Social Integration’ by the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO), grant number 40.5.18325.001. Visit the NRO website here: https://www.nro.nl/en. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.