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Hello, hello and welcome to 
Sheep Assisted the Genz mental 

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health podcast. 
I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 

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psychology student at the 
University of Pennsylvania. 

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Let's get into it. 
Happy Monday and welcome to your

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mental health mini. 
This weeks guest is Jeffrey Hall

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and we are talking loneliness. 
So we know that for generations,

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50 years of research has found 
that there is a period of life 

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that roughly happens between 
around 15 to 25 where people 

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have the most friends are going 
to ever have. 

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They spend the most time being 
social, they're ever going to be

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social. 
They spend the most time getting

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to know new people. 
After about 25 years old, people

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tend to leave college. 
They tend to work. 

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They may move around a lot, 
pursue graduate education. 

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They may change jobs a lot. 
They may move out of their 

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family of origin, their home. 
All of these things precipitate 

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the loss of friendships. 
People don't think about how 

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context creates opportunities 
for friendships or even very 

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much dictate who it is that 
you're going to become friends 

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or or a romantic relationship 
with. 

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As a consequence, when we leave 
environments where it's easy to 

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make friends because they're 
always around, we actually 

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struggle with it because it was 
so easy before. 

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So what will happen is people 
will go. 

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Well, there must be something 
wrong with me now because 

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friendship is hard now, but it 
wasn't hard then. 

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What people rarely do 
comparatively is go. 

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It was easy then because there 
are people everywhere and 

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they're always up for hanging 
out and there are a lot of cool 

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things to do. 
They tend to think that their 

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deficiency in making friendship 
is because of something that 

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they did. 
And I'm here to say there's 

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nothing wrong with you. 
It's absolutely sensical that 

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you would be in an environment 
that makes it hard to make 

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friends, and that's just kind of
how it is. 

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Part of the successes in the 
young adulthood of getting jobs 

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and moving on and going to 
Graduate School and falling the 

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love are also the very 
impediments to keeping 

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friendships. 
So people tend to actually go 

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through a period after 25 where 
there's a steady decline of the 

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number of friends people have 
and the time that people spend 

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with friends. 
That goes all the way until 40. 

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But there's also an incredible 
high degree of connection, 

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companionship and friendship 
during that time of life. 

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So young folks experience two 
things simultaneously, which are

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actually really difficult to 
resolve. 1 is a sense of 

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loneliness. 
And the reason that happens is 

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you leave school, you feel 
lonely, you break up with 

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somebody, you feel devastated, 
you lose a friend because of 

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conflict. 
And that's difficult and hard. 

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But on the other hand, this is a
time of life where you have more

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companionship, you have a great 
sense of connection to people 

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around you. 
So what's weird is, is that 

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although, yes, it's the case 
that we should be concerned 

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about young adult loneliness, we
should also be quite aware that 

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this is full of connection as 
well. 

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And I think that loneliness in 
part comes from a feeling of 

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wanting to be known at a deep 
and intimate level. 

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And that happens, I think, in 
the process of winnowing down 

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all of that social world into 
specific close intimate 

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relationships with one another. 
And that's a a gradual process 

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that we have collectively tended
to put off farther and farther 

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into the future as we delay 
marriage, delay having children,

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delay kind of making those big 
decisions in life. 

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One thing I'm a big proponent of
when we think about loneliness, 

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when we think about connection, 
it is both. 

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And it is both the case that we 
can be social and be, you know, 

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talking a lot of different 
people and meeting new people 

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and have a big social network. 
And it's also the case that 

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quality, close intimate 
connection leads to higher 

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well-being, less loneliness. 
They're both. 

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But The thing is, is that 
tension that you feel, right? 

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I'm around a lot of people, but 
I don't really feel fully known 

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is actually part of the human 
experience. 

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And it's the part of the human 
experience that I think is 

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particularly developmentally 
salient and powerful at that 

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period of life. 
You're sorting out who you are 

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and who you are to others. 
One of the benefits I've heard 

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about middle age, what I think 
is very funny is the although 

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people experience the lowest 
level of their well-being in 

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their life at middle age. 
Once they sort of realized that,

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you know, they know fully who 
they are, they have a lot more 

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confidence in who I am and what 
I've accomplished in my life and

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what I'm all about. 
A lot of the concerns of young 

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adulthood and fall away and 
they're there tends to be an 

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uptick in the middle-aged 
people's well-being because they

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go, well, you know what, my 
life, all those kind of crises 

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about who I am and where I am 
and what's all happening have 

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passed and now I'm able to fully
embrace myself as who I'm in. 

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But that's a long period of time
between 25 to 40 to get really 

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comfortable with you, where 
you're at. 

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And during that decline comes 
with also a lot of very 

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difficult questions. 
What is your career going to be?

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What are you going to do about 
family? 

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What are you going to do about 
relationships? 

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So I think a both end 
perspective allows for us to 

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understand that doesn't make you
weird or bad or somehow 

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deficient because you feel 
lonely while you're being 

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social. 
Feeling lonely is part of what 

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it means to be a social person. 
You would never feel lonely if 

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you didn't care about other 
people. 

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It's a good thing to care about 
people. 

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You will have better and more 
high quality days, weeks and 

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months if you respond to your 
feelings of loneliness in ways 

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that are pro social, inviting 
people, taking opportunities to 

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talk, reaching out to friends, 
even through, you know, texting 

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or whatever channels that you 
want. 

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But you have to respond to it. 
You have to treat it as a sign 

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of rather than I'm lonely and I 
shouldn't do anything right, 

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that this is a bad thing and 
there's something wrong with me.

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Instead, this is good. 
I feel lonely, which means that 

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I'm going to take action. 
It's a functional system like 

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hunger to motivate good quality 
actions. 

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So I would say that for those 
who are in the chronic lonely 

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state, this is one of the last 
things I would like to say about

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this is that there is definitely
treatments and therapies 

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available. 
So if you are a person who feels

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as if your loneliness is a state
that just doesn't change and 

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you're in, you're out, you still
constantly are feeling lonely no

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matter what you do. 
You don't feel different, you 

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know, you might benefit from 
from treatments that focus on 

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momentous hand in hand with 
depression or whatever it else 

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that you're coping.