Opinion | Everyone should have an eye for the lonely youngster

One in six young people seriously consider taking their own life after taking their own life, according to research by Network Health Research in Disasters. One in six. In addition, CBS concluded that last year young people felt ’emotionally lonely’ most often of all population groups. The government wants to start a study to better understand what can work against loneliness.

Joshua de Roos is a master’s student in Humanistics at the University of Humanistics.

The stereotypical image of loneliness is someone who sits at home alone and hardly sees or speaks to others. Emotional loneliness is more subtle. Here, someone is surrounded by people but still feels completely isolated. This mainly occurs in young people. They may see dozens of people every day at school, at the football club or in the city, but they cannot form a meaningful connection with those people.

Since this affects so many young people, I am convinced that this is not an individual problem. Apparently there are social developments that make young people feel lonely and in the worst case even suicidal. This mainly concerns the following two developments.

Stifling standards

First, we create unachievable ideals for a successful life. We used to have the Church that sometimes imposed stifling standards on how to live. Today we have social media and advertising. On the street, in the store and on our screens, we continuously see images of events we missed, things we don’t have and ideal bodies that don’t look like our bodies.

According to psychologist Paul Verhaeghe, this leads to alienation from ourselves: instead of living according to our own vision and values, we increasingly try to follow the unattainable ideals of society. And anyone who is estranged from themselves, Verhaeghe writes, cannot enter into intimate relationships with others.

Also read: ‘I thought: I am a burden to others’

Secondly, we glorify freedom, personal responsibility and personal development as the greatest life goals. There is nothing wrong with this in itself. We just seem to have forgotten how much we depend on others for this. You have the freedom to eat what you want only because others produce food for you. To become or be responsible, you often also need help from others. You develop most in contact with and relationship with others.

There is no place in this culture for vulnerability, attention and care

By forgetting this dependence, we also place less value on caring for others. Instead of asking and listening, we prefer to tell you what we think about something. Instead of thinking about how we want to live together as a community, we vote for a party that best represents our self-interest.

We are increasingly a collection of individuals rather than a community of people who, while having differences and conflicts, see each other as neighbors.

Young people grow up in this culture. They continuously receive images through all kinds of channels to which they reflect their appearance, their behavior and their feelings. This makes them feel that they are never good enough and they become alienated from themselves. At the same time, the solution to this is completely placed with them. Happiness and success are your responsibility. You just have to work hard for it and develop yourself.

Toxic cocktail

This poisonous cocktail leads young people to try harder and harder to pursue an unattainable ideal without looking after themselves or others. There is no place in this culture for vulnerability, attention and care. And that while genuinely connecting with others presupposes all these things. You feel most connected when the other person sees and takes your complete self, including fears and insecurities, seriously. But how can you still be seen when no one is watching?

Changing this is extremely complicated. It requires first of all that we become more aware that we are a community of interdependent and vulnerable individuals. A community in which we look out for each other despite the differences and conflicts that will always exist. We must also teach young people to think more about what makes their lives meaningful so that they do not blindly try to achieve unattainable ideals.

Reducing loneliness requires a shift to a culture in which there is more attention for the other person, our dependence on each other and our difficult search for a meaningful life. I wish I could make that cover on my own. But I need you.

You can talk about suicide at the national helpline 113 Suicide Prevention. Phone [phone] or www.113.nl