Recent research published in journals Development and psychopathology suggest that although spending time alone increases feelings of loneliness in the moment, adolescents who are frequently alone do not necessarily experience increased loneliness overall. This study provides evidence that the quality of a person’s social interactions and their specific personality traits play a major role in shaping how young people experience social isolation. These findings help explain why some teens successfully overcome loneliness while others face chronic struggles with social disconnection.
Adolescence is a time of major biological and social changes. During this period, young people gradually shift their focus from their parents to their peers as they try to form their own identity. This transition increases the need for belonging and acceptance in society.
Teens are at increased risk of feeling socially isolated because their peer networks are often still unstable and developing. Loneliness is generally defined as an unpleasant feeling that occurs when a person’s actual social connections do not meet their personal needs. This subjective experience is common among adolescents and is associated with negative mental health outcomes, such as risky behavior and academic difficulties.
“When we first think of loneliness, we often associate it with being alone, but quantity is the only thing that matters in the development of loneliness,” says Carla Luisa Vicher, a psychotherapist and advanced-trained doctoral student at the Department of Psychology at the University of Wuppertal in Germany. “We wanted to explore how loneliness and loneliness are interconnected in everyday life, and how the presence of others and maladaptive personality traits influence levels of loneliness during a particularly sensitive developmental period during adolescence.”
The threshold at which these negative emotions appear tends to vary greatly from person to person. A psychological concept known as the differential reactivity hypothesis proposes that there are systematic differences in how people respond to social situations. In other words, lonely people do not necessarily encounter more social stressors, but they do tend to react more strongly to the stressors they face in daily life.
Psychologists wanted to better understand how everyday social environments interact with personality to create feelings of isolation. They specifically focused on maladaptive personality traits. These are deeply ingrained unhealthy patterns of thought and behavior that make it difficult for a person to adapt to daily life and form healthy relationships.
Characteristics of these unhealthy traits include high levels of negative emotions, a tendency to disconnect from others, and difficulty controlling impulses. Serious personality conflicts often begin to emerge during the teenage years, so understanding how these traits influence everyday social experiences can provide insight into young people’s mental health.
To study these daily fluctuations, the researchers used a tracking method called ecological momentary assessment. The technique involves pinging participants’ smartphones multiple times a day, capturing their emotions and behaviors in real time. This approach reduces memory bias and provides a highly accurate picture of everyday life outside of laboratory settings.
“A key strength of this study is that it used ecological momentary assessment to capture youth’s experiences in real time, rather than relying solely on retrospective questionnaires,” Wicher told PsyPost. “This allowed us to examine how loneliness fluctuates from moment to moment in different social contexts. Such fine-grained insights help us better understand loneliness as a dynamic experience rather than a stable trait.”
The study involved 294 adolescents and young adults between the ages of 12 and 21, with a mean age of 17.5 years. 58.5% of the sample were female, and the majority were born in Germany. Participants showed high compliance, correctly answering 27,503 of 32,340 scheduled smartphone prompts.
During the 14-day follow-up period, participants received seven prompts each day. However, on Sunday I received 6 prompts. Additional surveys were sent out at the end of each night. Each prompt asked the youth who they were with, where they were, and how lonely they felt at that moment.
Before starting the 2-week follow-up period, participants completed a baseline questionnaire. These first studies measured their overall long-term loneliness and levels of maladaptive personality traits. To ensure diagnostic accuracy, close friends and caregivers also provided secondary assessments of participants’ personality traits.
Researchers found that teens reported higher levels of loneliness during specific moments spent alone and during the day. Interestingly, older youth felt this momentary loneliness more strongly when alone than younger participants. Male participants reported feeling less lonely when alone compared to female participants, consistent with evidence that teenage girls are often more socially oriented.
Despite the momentary increase in negative emotions, different patterns were revealed when different individuals were compared with each other. In general, those who spent more time alone over the course of two weeks did not report higher overall loneliness than their more sociable peers. This provides evidence that loneliness alone does not automatically equate to chronic social isolation.
“One of the most surprising findings is that adolescents who spend more time alone overall are not necessarily more lonely than others,” Wisher said. “Feelings of loneliness seem to depend less on how long a person is alone and more on how they experience and value their social relationships.”
The presence of others can only make you feel less lonely if they are close and dear companions. When participants were with friends, loved ones, and family, their feelings of isolation decreased significantly. Being close to people with weaker social connections, such as classmates or colleagues, did not reduce their loneliness at all.
Contextual factors also influence these emotional experiences. The highest levels of loneliness were often reported when participants were interacting with people online or when they were surrounded by strangers. Young people also felt more lonely on weekdays than on weekends, perhaps because they were forced into environments with less spontaneous interaction, such as at school, on weekdays.
Maladaptive personality traits played an important role in predicting these everyday emotional experiences. Young people with higher levels of unhealthy personality traits reported greater average loneliness and more extreme daily emotional fluctuations. A personality domain called detachment, characterized by social withdrawal and limited emotional expression, specifically predicted being more lonely and feeling worse.
This highlights the powerful internal influence of personality on subjective well-being. “We were also surprised that maladaptive personality traits increased overall loneliness, even though people were not alone very often during the study period,” Wisher said.
Another personality domain called negative affectivity, which involves experiencing intense and frequent negative emotions, strengthened the association with loneliness and feelings of loneliness. In a completely different realm called anankastya, which is characterized by extreme perfectionism and strict behavioral control, participants did not feel bad when they were alone. This suggests that young people high in perfectionism may be less sensitive to social disconnection due to their self-centered nature.
The authors also found that daily social satisfaction partially explained the relationship between loneliness and feelings of loneliness at the end of the day. Youth with maladaptive personality traits typically report lower daily social satisfaction and unmet basic social needs. This indicates that adolescent loneliness is not simply a function of social contacts, but is driven by the sense of fulfillment felt within those relationships.
Summarizing the study’s central message, Wicher shared several key points. “Our findings suggest that loneliness does not simply mean being alone, and that both the quantity and quality of social relationships influence adolescents’ feelings of loneliness,” Wisher said. “Young people feel more lonely when they are alone in their daily lives. The presence of friends, family, and partners reduces loneliness, but weaker ties such as classmates and colleagues do not.”
“Thus, the mere presence of others is not enough to reduce feelings of loneliness,” Witcher continued. “Young people with more maladaptive personality traits have greater and more variable feelings of loneliness in their daily lives. Furthermore, satisfaction with social contacts plays an important role in whether a person feels lonely at the end of the day.”
As with all research, there are some limitations. For example, the smartphone prompt relied on a single-item question to measure momentary loneliness so as not to overburden teens. This short measure may not capture the full complexity of emotions compared to longer-term studies.
It is also possible that participants intentionally underreported their social interactions. If teens said they were with someone, the app prompted several follow-up questions. Participants who are in a hurry may skew the data by claiming to be alone just to finish the survey quickly.
Furthermore, most of the participants were from stable socio-economic backgrounds and reported relatively low levels of clinical personality problems overall. This lack of diversity may limit the extent to which the findings of this study apply to youth from marginalized groups or those with severe psychiatric diagnoses. The overall low level of loneliness in the sample may also lead to an underestimation of certain statistical effects.
Readers should avoid thinking that spending time alone is inherently harmful to adolescents. Developmentally, it is normal for teens to spend more time alone as they explore independence and establish their identities. This finding shows that the quality of social contact is far more important than the quantity of interaction.
Future research may focus on more diverse samples to see whether cultural or economic factors alter these everyday social patterns. Scientists may also investigate specific coping mechanisms, such as emotion regulation strategies, to see how they interact with underlying personality traits. Exploring how digital communication tools can alleviate or exacerbate feelings of isolation will also be an important next step for developmental psychologists.
The study, “Madalaptive personality traits and everyday manifestations of loneliness in social situations among adolescents,” was authored by Carla Luisa Witcher, Suzanne Buecker, Paula Filippi, and Alexandra Kaulin.
