Do You Have Someone To Turn To? – Jennifer Oaten
Loneliness is the feeling that your need for meaningful human connection is not being met. It is not simply being alone.
A person can be alone and feel peaceful, content, or energised or be surrounded by people and still feel lonely if they do not feel understood, valued or emotionally connected. Loneliness can be described as the gap between the relationships you have and the relationships you want.
Last year, I heard cognitive neuroscientist Dr Mark Williams speak at the Australasian Mercy Secondary Schools Association conference, held here at Santa Maria.
His perspective is that connection is not a soft extra. He describes it as the thing our species has been built around, and as one of the strongest protections we have against poor mental and physical health. I had thought of connection as something that improved a school community. He treats it as something closer to a biological requirement.
Our girls have more ways to reach and connect with one another than any generation before them. Whether they feel less alone or lonely is a different question.
What The Research Tells Us
Ending Loneliness Together released a report last year drawing on national survey data and on interviews with young Australians. Among Australians aged 15 to 17, which covers our senior years, 28% reported loneliness that came and went, and 11% reported loneliness that persisted across two consecutive years. Those who reported the persistent kind were seven times more likely to report high or very high psychological distress. This does not resolve itself with time.
For our younger students, the picture comes from closer to home. The Commissioner for Children and Young People in Western Australia commissioned a review of the research on school transitions, which found that girls often find the move from primary to high school harder than boys do, and that this difference has received very little research attention. Anyone who has watched a Year 7 cohort settle in February will recognise the finding.
The Distinction We Miss
The part of the research I have thought about most is not a statistic. It comes from conversations with young people.
Being alone and feeling lonely are separate things. One student described wanting time by herself after a busy time of social activities and understood that this was a choice she was fortunate to be able to make. That kind of solitude does her good. A great deal of thinking and recovering happens in it.
Other young people shared that they feel loneliest in large groups. The younger ones put this down to being on the outside of a conversation happening in front of them if they were not directly involved. Others feel lonely because they have not found that small group they feel connected to.
A daughter who is never without company may still be lonely. You cannot see this from the outside. You have to ask her.
What Appears To Help
Three things come through the research, and none of them requires anything unusual.
Seeing people in person matters most. Young people who saw friends and family less than once a month were around two and a half times more likely to experience episodic loneliness, and three times more likely to experience the persistent kind, compared with those who saw people weekly. This is close to what Dr Williams reports. We evolved to read one another through faces, and a screen returns very little of what a face gives us.
Belonging matters. Young people who did not take part in a sporting group, hobby or community club were around one and a half times more likely to experience persistent loneliness. A regular commitment puts the same people in the same room each week. Friendships tend to follow.
Parent connection is crucial. The finding I want parents to hear most clearly is about home. Young people who reported low satisfaction with their relationship with their parents were about twice as likely to experience persistent loneliness. The relationship a girl has with her parents appears to protect her from loneliness elsewhere.
What Our Own Girls Told Us
Last year, we asked our departing Year 12 students whether there was a staff member or adult at Santa Maria who listened to them when they needed to talk. Of the 155 who responded, 80% agreed or strongly agreed.
Nationally, the Mission Australia Youth Survey found that three quarters of young people had someone to turn to when they were unsure about an important decision. Our figure sits a little above that.
I keep looking at the other fifth. Around one in five could not say yes to the question. Almost all of them sat in the middle. Perhaps the answer was complicated, or the person was there and the moment never came.
When we asked those same students what they valued most about their time here, friendships came up more often than any other answer. Both results came from the same cohort.
This is not new ground for us. Our Becoming a Mercy Woman pathway, set out in our Strategic Plan, describes what each year of a girl’s time here is meant to build. In Year 5, she grows in courage as she adapts to a new environment, building belonging and community. In Year 7, she builds connections to cultivate a sense of belonging.
What Parents Can Do
Families play the most important role in protecting young people from loneliness. While parents cannot prevent every experience of loneliness, they can create the secure relationships, skills, and opportunities that make young people more resilient and connected.
Some practical ways families can help include:
- Prioritise quality face-to-face time together, such as regular family meals, create family traditions and rituals, share uninterrupted, tech-free time together and ensure your daughter feels listened to and that she belongs. Balance screen time with face-to-face relationships.
- Build open communication by encouraging conversations about feelings without judgement. Ask open-ended questions about friendships and belonging, and validate emotions rather than trying to solve problems. Recognise signs of loneliness and reluctance to attend social events. Wanting an afternoon alone is not a warning sign, and treating it as one teaches her that solitude is a problem. What matters is whether she chose it.
- Help her find a meaningful commitment. Not another commitment for its own sake, but something she really cares about, particularly the people she really cares about. Support involvement in sports, music, faith communities, clubs or volunteering. Finding her people in one activity is worth far more than a full timetable. I have watched this happen often enough to believe it. A girl joins something, Book Club, Philosophy Club or the Concert Band, and within a term, she has found people who care about the same thing she does. The activity is not what changes her.
- Help develop social skills, including how to initiate conversations, how to communicate respectfully, resolve conflicts and include others and encourage opportunities for socialising outside school. If loneliness becomes persistent or is accompanied by anxiety or depression, seek support from teachers, school counsellors or external providers.
Belonging begins at home, grows through school and flourishes in community. When families intentionally nurture connection, listen deeply and encourage participation in relationships and community life, they give young people one of the greatest protections against loneliness.
I wonder what your daughter would say about loneliness if you asked her.
- adolescent connection, Featured, parent daughter relationships, Pastoral Care, Santa Maria College wellbeing, school community connection, sense of belonging, Student Wellbeing, supporting teenage girls, teen loneliness, teenage girls wellbeing
Author: Santa Maria College
Santa Maria College is a vibrant girls school with a growing local presence and reputation. Our Mission is to educate young Mercy women who act with courage and compassion to enrich our world. Santa Maria College is located in Attadale in Western Australia, 16 km from the Perth CBD. We offer a Catholic education for girls in Years 5 – 12 and have 1300 students, including 152 boarders.
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