JSPR

Article

Journal of Social and

Personal Relationships
Less in-person social 2019, Vol. 36(6) 1892–1913
ª The Author(s) 2019
interaction with peers Article reuse guidelines:
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among U.S. adolescents DOI: 10.1177/0265407519836170

journals.sagepub.com/home/spr

in the 21st century and

links to loneliness

Jean M. Twenge 1, Brian H. Spitzberg1,

and W. Keith Campbell2

Abstract
In nationally representative samples of U.S. adolescents (age: 13–18) and entering college
students, 1976–2017 (N ¼ 8.2 million), iGen adolescents in the 2010s (vs. previous
generations) spent less time on in-person (face-to-face) social interaction with peers,
including getting together or socializing with friends, going to parties, going out, dating,
going to movies, and riding in cars for fun. College-bound high school seniors in 2016 (vs.
the late 1980s) spent an hour less a day engaging in in-person social interaction, despite
declines in paid work and little change in homework or extracurricular activity time. The
results suggest that time displacement occurs at the cohort level, with in-person social
interaction declining as digital media use increased, but not at the individual level, where
in-person social interaction and social media use are positively correlated. Adolescents’
feelings of loneliness increased sharply after 2011. Adolescents low in in-person social
interaction and high in social media use reported the most loneliness.

Keywords
Birth cohort differences, digital media, face-to-face communication, loneliness, social
interaction

1
San Diego State University, USA
2
University of Georgia, USA

Corresponding author:
Jean M. Twenge, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA
92182-4611, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Twenge et al. 1893

Human beings have an inherent need to belong, predisposing them to desire social
interaction with others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Social interaction and social support
have been linked to a variety of positive outcomes for physical and mental health
throughout the lifespan (Blakemore, 2012; Shor, Roelfs, & Yogev, 2013), whereas their
opposites—social isolation, ostracism, and loneliness—have been linked to negative
outcomes (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris, & Stephenson, 2015; Wesselmann &
Williams, 2017). Adolescence is a particularly crucial time for social interaction, and the
increased importance of spending time with peers is a critical marker of this develop-
mental stage of increasing independence and building relationships outside the family
(Fuligni & Eccles, 1993; Lerner & Steinberg, 2009; Weeks & Asher, 2012).
In recent years, the mechanisms of adolescents’ social interaction have changed, with
adolescents in the 2010s (known as iGen) spending more time on digital media such as
texting, gaming, and social media, and with time online doubling between 2006 and
2016 (Twenge, Martin, & Spitzberg, 2018). Ninety-five percent of adolescents in 2018
had access to a smartphone, up from 23% in 2011, and nearly half of adolescents said
they used the Internet “almost constantly,” up from 24% in 2014 (Anderson & Jiang,
2018). The shift toward digital media has led some to theorize that digital communi-
cation has displaced face-to-face interaction among adolescents (boyd, 2014; Mims,
2017); however, little research has explored this question rigorously. In this analysis, our
primary goals were to discover whether the amount of time adolescents spent on in-
person social interaction with peers during their leisure time changed over recent
decades and whether shifts in feelings of loneliness have accompanied these trends.

Time displacement at cohort versus individual levels of analysis

We exist in a complex communication ecosystem with limits on our absolute amount of
time (Jang & Pasek, 2015) and our ability to establish and maintain relationships
(Gonçalves, Perra, & Vespignani, 2011; Liang & Fu, 2015). As such, an attention
economy arises in which every communicative activity competes at multiple levels with
alternatives (Falkinger, 2007), especially as information and connection overload
increase (Feng et al., 2015).
These observations form the basis for the idea of time displacement, which predicts
that the time adolescents spend on digital media may displace time that might have been
spent on in-person social interaction. Other observers, however, have proposed the
contrasting idea of complementarity, which argues that digital media may instead
complement in-person social interaction (Hampton, Sessions, & Her, 2011; Hooghe &
Oser, 2015; Robinson & Martin, 2009). For example, Dienlin, Masur, and Trepte (2017)
found that more frequent social media use predicted increased in-person interaction 6
months later.
Importantly, however, studies supporting complementarity have generally performed
their analyses at the individual level, not at the cohort (or group) level. Due to individual
differences in sociability and other factors, people who interact with friends via digital
media may be more likely to interact with them in person. For example, individuals high
in extraversion, a trait valuing interaction with others and sociability, also have more
1894 Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 36(6)

friends on social media sites (Liu & Campbell, 2017; Whaite, Shensa, Sidani, Colditz, &
Primack, 2018). This “rich get richer” hypothesis proposes that some people engage in
both more digital and more face-to-face communication (Liang & Fu, 2015; Lima,
Marques, Muinos, & Camilo, 2017). Thus, cohort-level displacement of in-person social
interaction by digital media on average may coexist with individual-level com-
plementarity between digital media use and in-person social interaction.
The distinction between cohort and individual level effects can be seen in the fol-
lowing example. Imagine a cultural group without digital media. In this group, young
people spend time together in in-person interaction, with more sociable young people
doing this more often. If digital media are added to this culture, the sociable young
people will have more in-person interactions and also more digital media interactions
(perhaps especially social media, given that it is the digital medium most associated with
social relationships); however, the total number of in-person interactions in that culture
might drop as they are replaced by digital media interactions. We examine both of these
levels of analysis (cohort and individual) in our analyses.

Possible links to loneliness

Loneliness is a perceived deficit of relational intimacy and is thus a function of actual as
well as desired relational connection (Beller & Wagner, 2018; Russell, Cutrona, McRae,
& Gomez, 2012). Loneliness has been linked to a variety of distal predictors (e.g.,
gender, shyness, social anxiety, self-esteem, parental attachment styles, deficient social
skills) and more proximal risk factors (e.g., social support, depression, stress, self-
disclosure; Mahon, Yarcheski, Yarcheski, Cannella, & Hanks, 2006; Segrin, McNelis,
& Swiatkowski, 2016; Vanhalst et al., 2015).
In-person social interaction is a well-established protective factor against loneliness
(e.g., Pea et al., 2012; Steptoe, Shankar, Demakakos, & Wardle, 2013). Thus, a decline in
in-person social interaction might be accompanied by an increase in feelings of lone-
liness. There is disagreement, however, over whether increases in digital media use
might offset any increase in loneliness linked to declines in in-person social interaction
(Hood, Creed, & Mills, 2018; Nowland, Necka, & Cacioppo, 2018; Reissmann, Hauser,
Stollberg, Kaunzinger, & Lange, 2018; Wang, Frison, Eggermont, & Vandenbosch,
2018). Some studies find that digital media use enhances feelings of social connection
(Ahn & Shin, 2013; Deters & Mehl, 2013; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007), suggesting that
lonely people may compensate for deficits in social skills or social networks using digital
media, or that digital media involves adolescents simply communicating with their
friends, the same as they always have (boyd, 2014). In contrast, other studies find that
those who spend more time on digital media, especially social media, are more likely to
experience loneliness (Kross et al., 2013; Primack et al., 2017; Song et al., 2014),
suggesting that electronic communication provides leaner, less fulfilling forms of
interaction (Pittman & Reich, 2016) and less robust social support (Rains, Brunner,
Akers, Pavlich, & Goktas, 2017).
In this area, individual-level versus cohort-level analyses may produce different
results. At the cohort level, loneliness might increase if in-person social interaction
declines on average as digital media use increases. At the individual level, more sociable
Twenge et al. 1895

individuals, who spend more time on social media, may also spend more time on in-
person social interaction and thus be less lonely (similar to the “rich-get-richer”
hypothesis). Thus, controlling for frequency of in-person social interaction when
examining links between digital media and loneliness at the individual level is an
important step.

Current research
Our primary goal was to examine birth cohort differences in the frequency of in-person
social interaction with peers during leisure time among U.S. adolescents, drawing from
two large surveys spanning several decades (N ¼ 8.2 million): the Monitoring the Future
(MtF) surveys of a nationally representative sample of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders and the
American Freshman (AF) survey of a nationally representative sample of students
entering 4-year colleges and universities. With their time-lag design sampling a set age
group over several decades, these surveys shed light on trends in adolescents’ social
interaction over time while holding age constant (Campbell, Campbell, Siedor, &
Twenge, 2015; Schaie, 1965). Thus, these surveys can compare four generations of
American adolescents (Boomers, GenX, Millennials, and iGen) at the same age
(Twenge, 2017). We aim to examine trends in in-person social interaction across many
domains and activities. Previous research found that iGen adolescents were less likely to
engage in adult social activities such as dating, going out without their parents, and going
to the movies (Twenge et al., 2018; Twenge & Park, 2019); however, it is not known if
the frequency of face-to-face activities overall—including those less related to inde-
pendence—has changed.
We also examined birth cohort trends in feelings of loneliness. A previous study
examined loneliness among adolescents between 1991 and 2012 (Clark, Loxton, &
Tobin, 2015), finding small decreases over this time period. However, it is unknown how
loneliness changed after smartphones were used by the majority of Americans beginning
in 2012 and social media use became more frequent among adolescents (Twenge et al.,
2018). We also explore how loneliness is related to the frequency of in-person social
interaction and social media use at the individual level.

Method
Participants
The MtF survey samples middle and high schools across the U.S. chosen to represent a
cross-section of the U.S. population (see http://www.monitoringthefuture.org). The
participation rate of schools is between 66% and 80%, and the student participation rate
is between 79% and 83% (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, Schulenberg, & Miech, 2017).
MtF surveyed a nationally representative sample of 12th graders each year since
1976 and 8th and 10th graders since 1991 (on items included here, maximum N for 8th
graders ¼ 453,567; for 10th graders ¼ 413,336; and for 12th graders ¼ 604,638; see
tables for n values of individual items). MtF data are publicly available online at the
MtF website up to 2017.
1896 Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 36(6)

The AF project, administered by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at

UCLA, surveyed entering first-year students at 4-year colleges or universities since 1966
(total n 1966–2016 ¼ 11 million; the time use questions were first asked in 1987, so here
n ¼ 6.7 million), with responses weighted to make them nationally representative. AF
data are publicly available as aggregated data by year up to 2016 on the HERI website
(Eagan et al., 2016, 2017). Students are asked to describe their time use during their last
year of high school.

Measures
In-person social interaction with peers. We examined items that captured in-person social
interaction with peers during leisure time. This definition excludes extracurricular
activities such as sports/exercise or volunteer work. These activities (1) are not strictly
leisure time activities for this age group (e.g., volunteer work is often required for high-
school graduation, and sports are seen as important for college applications) and (2) do
not always involve interacting with others in a social manner, instead involving more
task-oriented activities. For example, engaging in organized sports has relatively little
relationship to friendship quality (Mathur & Berndt, 2006). We excluded “watch TV” as
it is often a solitary activity rather than a social one; co-viewing of TV usually occurs
with family members rather than with peers (Coyne, Padilla-Walker, Fraser, Fellows, &
Day, 2014). Other items could not be used as they changed their wording during the
course of the survey (“go to rock concerts” changed to “go to music concerts” in 2006) or
were not asked in all years (“go to video arcades”).
MtF (8th, 10th, and 12th graders)
Getting together with friends, riding in a car for fun, going to parties, going to movies, going to
malls, going to bars. 8th, 10th, and 12th graders were asked how often they did the fol-
lowing: “get together with friends, informally”; “ride around in a car (or motorcycle) just
for fun”; “go to parties or other social affairs”; and “go to movies” with response choices
recoded to approximate times per year: never ¼ 0, a few times a year ¼ 5, once or twice a
month ¼ 18 (1.5  12), at least once a week ¼ 78 (1.5  52), and almost everyday ¼ 300.
(Results using the original 1–5 scale without recoding are shown in Supplemental Table
1.) The 8th and 10th grade surveys also included “go to a shopping mall” and the 12th
grade surveys included “go to taverns, bars, or nightclubs.”
Going out. “During a typical week, on how many evenings do you go out for fun and
recreation?” with choices of less than one evening per week ¼ 0.25, one evening ¼ 1,
two evenings ¼ 2, three evenings ¼ 3, four or five evenings ¼ 4.5, and six or seven
evenings per week ¼ 6.5. Less than one was recoded as .25 instead of .50 as “none” was
not a response choice on this item, so the inclusion of those who would have otherwise
answered “none” would likely draw down the average. For 8th and 10th graders,
“(Don’t count things you do with parents or other adult relatives)” was added to the end
of the question.
Going on dates. “On the average, how often (if ever) do you go out with a date?” with
choices of never ¼ 0, once a month or less ¼ 0.12, 2 or 3 times a month ¼ 0.58, once a
Twenge et al. 1897

week ¼ 1, 2 or 3 times a week ¼ 2.5, and over 3 times a week ¼ 4. The calculations for
the first two recodes were as follows: once a month or less ¼ 0.50 times a month, divided
by 4.3 (the average number of weeks in a month) ¼ 0.12; 2 or 3 times a month ¼ 2.5,
divided by 4.3 ¼ 0.58.
Composite measure of in-person social interaction. For use in correlational analyses, we
created a composite variable of the 7 in-person social interaction items asked of all 8th
and 10th graders (going out, going on dates, getting together with friends informally,
going to parties, riding in a car just for fun, going to movies, and going to a shopping
mall) by Z-scoring them, adding them together, and dividing by 7 (a ¼ .67).
Entering college students: Socializing with friends, partying. Beginning in 1987, entering
college students in AF responded to a section beginning, “During your last year in high
school, how much time did you spend during a typical week doing the following
activities?” In 2 separate items, students were asked how many hours a week they spent
“socializing with friends” and “partying.” Response choices were recoded as none ¼ 0,
less than 1 hr ¼ 0.5, 1–2 hours ¼ 1.5, 3–5 hours ¼ 4, 6–10 hours ¼ 8, 11–15 hours ¼ 13,
16–20 hours ¼ 18, and over 20 hours ¼ 25.

Loneliness. The 8th, 10th, and 12th grade MtF surveys included 6 items measuring
loneliness: “A lot of times I feel lonely,” “There is always someone I can turn to if I need
help” (reverse scored), “I often feel left out of things,” “There is usually someone I can
talk to, if I need to” (reverse scored), “I often wish I had more good friends,” and “I
usually have a few friends around that I can get together with” (reverse scored).
Response choices were disagree ¼ 1, mostly disagree ¼ 2, neither ¼ 3, mostly agree ¼
4, and agree ¼ 5. The 6 items had satisfactory internal reliability (as of .70, .68, and .63
for 12th, 10th, and 8th, respectively), so we added them together to form a composite
scale of loneliness. Clark, Loxton, and Tobin (2015) found that this 6-item scale showed
convergent validity with established measures of loneliness such as the UCLA Lone-
liness Scale and that the items formed two factors: subjective isolation (the regular-
scored items; a ¼ .76) and social network isolation (the reverse-scored items; a ¼ .71).
We found similar as for the subscales.

Social media use. The survey asked how frequently students “visit social networking Web
sites” beginning in 2008. From 2008 to 2011 the item included “like MySpace or
Facebook,” which was changed to “like Facebook” from 2012 to 2013 and to “like
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.” in 2014. Response choices were recoded to never ¼
0, a few times a year ¼ 5, once or twice a month ¼ 18 (1.5  12), at least once a week ¼
78 (1.5  52), and almost everyday ¼ 300.

Data analysis plan

The analyses examining the correlations of in-person social interaction and social media
with loneliness were limited to 8th and 10th graders (as these items were not asked of the
same participants among 12th graders) and were limited to 2009–2017, when the social
media item was asked of 8th and 10th graders on the same form as the loneliness items.
1898 Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 36(6)

To examine possible additive and interaction effects, we regressed the composite of in-
person social interaction, social media use, and their product on loneliness, also
including demographic controls for race (using dummy codes for Hispanic and Black),
sex, grade, and socioeconomic status (SES; we used mother’s education as it had less
missing data than father’s education). To illustrate these results, we also created a figure
showing mean loneliness for those low and high in in-person social interaction and low
and high in hours spent on social media. For in-person social interaction, this was those
+1 SD the mean. Social media had a heavily right-skewed distribution, so we compared
those who never used social media (low) to those who used it almost every day (high).

Results
Trends in in-person social interaction with peers
Recent cohorts, especially iGen adolescents of the mid-2010s, reported spending less
time with their friends in person across a variety of contexts, including getting together
with friends, socializing, going to parties, going to movies, riding in cars for fun, going to
shopping malls, dating, and going out (see Table 1). In many cases, half of the decline in
in-person social activities occurred between 2010 and 2017.
In the Boomer-era late 1970s, 52% of 12th graders said they got together with their
friends almost every day, but by 2017 only 28% did (see Figure 1; these trends were
similar across race/ethnicity, SES, and gender: see Supplemental Figure 1). Thus, 46%
fewer iGen (vs. Boomer) 12th graders saw their friends almost every day. Eighth
graders in 2017 got together with their friends 41 fewer times a year than in 2010. The
percentage of students attending parties at least once a month or more also declined
(see Figure 2). iGen 10th graders went to approximately 17 fewer parties a year than
GenX 10th graders did.
GenX entering college students in 1987 reported spending an average of 13.51 hr a
week socializing with their friends in their last year in high school; by 2016, this shrunk
to 9.14 hr, a decrease of 4 hr and 22 min a week. Time spent at parties decreased by 3 hr
and 28 min a week (see Table 1 and Figure 3). Thus, iGen college-bound seniors spent an
hour less a day on in-person social interaction than GenX students did (which translates
to 7.84 fewer hours a week and 408 fewer hours a year).
Teens also reported going out with their friends fewer times per week (see Table 1 and
Supplemental Figure 2), with fewer going out twice a week or more (see Figure 4). Some
of the decline was driven by the increasing number who rarely went out; twice as many
iGen 12th graders in 2017 (19%, vs. 8% among Boomers) said they went out less than
once a week. iGen 12th graders went out approximately 38 fewer times per year than
Boomer 12th graders and 25 fewer times a year than Millennial 12th graders in 2010.
The frequency of specific outings such as dating, riding in cars for fun, going to bars,
going to the movies, and going shopping also declined (see Table 1). These declines
occurred at the same time that digital media use was increasing (Twenge et al., 2018);
thus, at the group level, in-person social interaction time declined during the years
when digital media use increased. These results suggest a displacement effect in a
time-constrained attention economy, perhaps similar to the way television and other
 Table 1. U.S. adolescents’ in-person social interaction, 8th, 10th, and 12th graders and entering college students reporting on their last year in high school,
1976–2017.
Hours or Hours, or
times/year times/year
1976– 1980– 1985– 1990– 1995– 2000– 2005– (d), earliest (d), 2010–
N 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 to 2016/2017 2016/2017

Get together with friends (times/year)

8th 451,074 — — — 180.04 174.41 165.449 161.72 153.68 144.93 135.78 133.20 127.89 123.34 120.66 112.34 67.70 41.34
(123.10) (123.82) (123.79) (123.67) (123.95) (121.41) (119.63) (120.70) (119.52) (118.15) (117.87) (115.44) (.56) (.35)
10th 411,803 — — — 178.98 174.65 165.96 161.25 149.71 145.97 140.15 130.00 124.02 118.47 118.19 114.25 64.73 35.46
(121.35) (121.74) (122.04) (121.54) (119.67) (119.57) (118.09) (116.25) (115.14) (113.66) (114.27) (113.36) (.54) (.30)
12th 184,308 185.40 178.47 179.51 173.58 174.00 168.97 162.68 163.35 153.15 152.89 142.11 134.44 134.25 129.11 120.46 64.94 43.22
(120.40) (120.34) (119.96) (120.63) (120.90) (121.09) (121.14) (121.51) (120.01) (119.59) (118.28) (116.76) (117.19) (116.91) (114.16) (.55) (.36)
Socialize with friends
College (hr/week) 6,739,855 — — 13.43 12.88 12.90 12.79 11.51 10.94 10.56 10.27 9.73 9.36 9.33 9.14 — 4.29 1.80
(7.85) (7.71) (7.76) (7.80) (7.66) (7.44) (7.35) (7.44) (7.22) (7.07) (7.04) (7.12) (.57) (.25)
Go to parties
8th (times/year) 452,002 — — — 44.71 46.95 46.23 44.27 43.80 42.12 37.85 38.58 37.73 36.19 34.10 33.79 10.92 10.01
(64.04) (67.47) (67.71) (67.45) (68.41) (65.96) (60.449) (63.17) (63.55) (61.86) (59.27) (59.89) (.17) (.16)
10th (times/year) 412,497 — — — 48.95 50.89 49.45 46.25 44.19 42.48 39.81 36.79 35.64 32.31 31.45 31.46 17.49 12.73
(60.68) (64.67) (65.26) (63.81) (63.08) (62.49) (60.19) (57.86) (59.16) (54.93) (55.08) (54.38) (.29) (.22)
12th (times/year) 184,752 44.17 44.42 46.51 43.26 44.46 44.36 42.25 40.96 38.73 37.51 34.73 31.63 30.58 29.10 27.80 16.38 13.16
(59.08) (56.59) (57.49) (55.97) (59.86) (60.17) (60.11) (60.61) (60.29) (56.52) (56.86) (53.27) (53.27) (52.72) (50.74) (.29) (.24)
College (hr/week) 6,739,855 — — 5.57 5.04 4.80 4.38 3.67 3.23 2.56 2.69 2.44 2.19 1.98 2.11 — 3.46 1.12
(6.16) (6.02) (5.96) (5.77) (5.30) (5.03) (4.13) (4.68) (4.11) (3.94) (3.87) (3.90) (.69) (.25)
Go out (times/week)
8th 424,536 — — — 2.45 2.50 2.38 2.31 2.25 2.20 2.11 2.02 1.93 1.91 1.79 1.72 0.73 0.53
(1.94) (1.96) (1.95) (1.94) (1.94) (1.91) (1.86) (1.85) (1.82) (1.81) (1.76) (1.70) (.38) (.29)
10th 398,686 — — — 2.45 2.51 2.38 2.31 2.26 2.18 2.07 1.95 1.86 1.80 1.76 1.74 0.71 0.52
(1.75) (1.79) (1.79) (1.79) (1.78) (1.75) (1.70) (1.69) (1.66) (1.64) (1.62) (1.60) (.41) (.31)
12th 604,638 2.87 2.67 2.71 2.69 2.75 2.73 2.65 2.62 2.50 2.52 2.38 2.28 2.24 2.19 2.13 0.74 0.49
(1.67) (1.58) (1.59) (1.62) (1.68) (1.69) (1.69) (1.72) (1.71) (1.69) (1.66) (1.66) (1.64) (1.60) (1.59) (.45) (.30)
Go on date (times/week)
8th 424,403 — — — 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.40 0.35 0.31 0.29 0.26 0.22 0.20 0.23 0.23
(0.86) (0.88) (0.88) (0.88) (0.87) (0.84) (0.81) (0.75) (0.72) (0.70) (0.64) (0.61) (.28) (.28)
10th 398,242 — — — 0.76 0.73 0.66 0.62 0.61 0.55 0.53 0.47 0.43 0.40 0.37 0.37 0.39 0.24
(1.10) (1.09) (1.05) (1.02) (1.02) (0.95) (0.94) (0.89) (0.84) (0.83) (0.81) (0.80) (.37) (.26)

1899
(continued)
1900
Table 1. (continued)
Hours or Hours, or
times/year times/year
1976– 1980– 1985– 1990– 1995– 2000– 2005– (d), earliest (d), 2010–
N 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 to 2016/2017 2016/2017

12th 599,217 1.28 1.28 1.32 1.28 1.20 1.10 0.98 0.89 0.78 0.76 0.72 0.69 0.70 0.67 0.66 0.62 0.23
(1.32) (1.31) (1.34) (1.34) (1.34) (1.31) (1.25) (1.18) (1.12) (1.11) (1.09) (1.07) (1.09) (1.09) (1.07) (.48) (.20)
Ride in car for fun (times/year)
8th 451,486 — — — 112.02 114.40 110.83 103.08 97.37 94.07 88.42 89.94 90.64 88.83 84.49 79.87 32.15 17.50
(126.45) (128.01) (127.69) (126.05) (123.51) (121.83) (119.60) (120.36) (120.66) (119.86) (117.55) (114.64) (.26) (.15)
10th 412,322 — — — 133.15 133.30 132.64 120.08 110.46 104.43 98.93 96.36 92.95 92.37 94.47 94.21 38.94 16.25
(125.61) (126.87) (127.60) (125.85) (123.34) (120.99) (119.30) (118.62) (117.18) (117.09) (118.84) (117.17) (.31) (.14)
12th 184,799 116.04 126.01 135.25 123.448 123.27 127.95 119.67 114.73 103.79 102.58 99.09 100.03 108.50 103.15 101.03 15.01 13.70
(120.02) (123.04) (124.74) (123.05) (125.62) (126.81) (126.01) (124.23) (121.34) (121.10) (118.80) (119.33) (123.05) (120.92) (119.79) (.13) (.11)
Going to movies (times/year)
8th 453,567 — — — 26.93 27.76 28.62 27.25 23.17 21.82 20.81 19.88 19.92 19.52 18.41 17.83 9.10 5.34
(34.48) (36.38) (37.40) (35.91) (32.91) (32.31) (31.25) (30.77) (30.90) (30.54) (29.64) (29.64) (.27) (.17)
10th 413,336 — — — 20.36 20.58 21.43 20.69 18.27 16.82 17.43 15.94 15.32 15.18 14.88 14.40 5.96 3.87
(26.14) (27.36) (28.73) (27.70) (25.81) (25.42) (26.10) (23.98) (24.19) (25.98) (24.97) (23.84) (.23) (.16)
12th 184,601 19.84 20.45 21.04 18.86 19.06 19.76 18.93 17.24 15.52 15.95 14.82 14.70 15.29 14.05 15.60 4.24 1.64
(26.84) (26.35) (25.62) (24.15) (26.08) (27.88) (28.65) (26.08) (25.21) (23.85) (26.19) (2.96) (28.82) (24.14) (30.42) (.15) (.06)
Go to a shopping mall (times/year)
8th 451,311 — — — 61.65 60.90 52.55 41.39 37.52 35.93 33.01 35.59 35.57 33.69 33.59 32.33 29.32 5.19
(72.16) (73.53) (68.72) (59.58) (57.20) (55.04) (50.57) (56.30) (56.84) (53.38) (52.98) (52.33) (.43) (.09)
10th 411,600 — — — 50.52 49.20 43.74 35.12 30.98 29.48 28.52 28.26 27.61 27.22 27.35 26.93 23.59 4.05
(61.78) (61.65) (58.98) (51.02) (47.96) (45.27) (44.58) (45.15) (43.55) (45.21) (45.14) (45.13) (.40) (.09)
Going to bars (times/year)
12th 184,599 28.63 23.42 18.46 17.37 19.42 18.53 15.79 16.64 14.70 13.11 12.39 11.29 10.46 10.07 9.35 19.28 7.29
(55.76) (51.04) (45.26) (43.93) (46.88) (48.07) (446.58) (49.78) (46.68) (46.14) (45.12) (42.82) (40.18) (440.88) (39.87) (.37) (.16)

Note. Dashes indicate that the item was not asked during those years, the survey was not conducted during those years, or the data are not yet available for those years; d ¼ difference in standard deviations
from the first group of years to the last (shown in parentheses in the last two columns); all d’s > .03 are significant at p < .05 or lower; hours, times per week, and times per year are estimated from the ranges
given (e.g., 3–5 hr ¼ 4 hr) and are thus not precise; and standard deviations for the means are given in parentheses.
Twenge et al. 1901

55

50

45
% almost every day

40
12th
10th
8th
35

30

25

Year

Figure 1. Percent getting together with their friends almost every day, U.S. 8th, 10th, and 12th
graders, 1976–2017.

80

75
% once a month or more

70

65 12th
10th
8th
60

55

50

Year

Figure 2. Percent going to parties once a month or more, U.S. 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, 1976–2017.
1902 Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 36(6)

13

11

Socializing
9 with
Hours a week

friends

7
Parties

Year

Figure 3. Hours a week socializing with friends and partying, entering college students reporting
on their last year in high school, 1987–2016.

80

75

70
% twice a week or more

65

60 12th
10th
8th
55

50

45

40

Year

Figure 4. Percent going out twice a week or more, U.S. 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, 1976–2017.
Twenge et al. 1903

factors replaced civic and community engagement activities in the 20th century
(Putnam, 2000); electronic communication instead appears to have displaced more
personal social relationships. Another indicator of displacement and its implications
for relational intimacy is whether the trends in adolescents’ modes of social interaction
co-occurred with trends in loneliness.

Trends in loneliness
Loneliness increased significantly between 2010 and 2017 among 8th, 10th, and 12th
graders on the total scale as well as the subscales (see Table 2 and Figure 5). The
increases in loneliness appeared across all demographic groups, but were most pro-
nounced among females, Black and Hispanic adolescents, and lower SES adolescents
(see Supplemental Figure 3). The increase in loneliness since 2010 is a small to moderate
effect size (d ¼ .33 for 12th graders) but is unusually large for such a short period of time
(d ¼ .05 per year, compared to the more common d ¼ .01 to d ¼ .02 a year; Twenge &
Foster, 2008). Thus, loneliness increased during years when in-person social interaction
was declining and digital media use was increasing (see Figure 6).
To guard against the possibility of confusing the emotional experience of loneliness
with its causes (Weeks & Asher, 2012), we also examined the single item “A lot of times
I feel lonely,” which does not mention specific relationships. Using this single item, 50%
more 12th graders in 2017 (vs. 2012) agreed or mostly agreed that they often felt lonely.

Associations among in-person social interaction, social media use, and loneliness
Next, we examined correlations between in-person social interaction, social media use,
and loneliness, including controls for race, sex, grade, and SES. In-person social
interaction frequency was correlated r(33,080) ¼ .14, p < .001, with total loneliness
and r(33,244) ¼ .15, < .001 with the single item, and social media use was not
significantly correlated r(33,080) ¼ .01, ns with total loneliness or with the single
item, r(33,244) ¼ .01, ns.
Social media use and in-person social interaction were positively correlated,
r(33,244) ¼ .19, p < .001; thus, adolescents who spent more time on social media also
spent more time with friends in person. Therefore, we examined possible additive or
interactive effects. In a regression including in-person social interaction and social media
use (centered), their product, and the demographic controls as independent variables and
total loneliness as the dependent variable (DV), there was less loneliness with more
in-person social interaction (b ¼ .15, p < .001), but slightly higher loneliness with more
social media use (b ¼ .02, p < .001). The interaction term was significant, b ¼ .02,
p < .001. With the single loneliness item as the DV, there was less loneliness with more
in-person interaction (b ¼ .16, p < .001), more loneliness with more social media use
(b ¼ .04, p < .001), and a significant interaction term (b ¼ .02, p < .01). Thus, social
media use was not correlated with loneliness in bivariate correlations, but was linked to
slightly more loneliness when in-person social interaction was controlled.
Adolescents low in in-person social interaction and high in social media use reported
the highest level of total loneliness (see Figure 7), with the difference significant for
1904
Table 2. U.S. adolescents’ total loneliness, subjective isolation, social network isolation, and responses to “A lot of times I feel lonely,” 1977–2017.
1977– 1980– 1985– 1990– 1995– 2000– 2005– d (earliest d (2010
N 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 to 2017) to 2017)

Loneliness
8th 124,220 — — — 2.25 2.19 2.17 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.20 2.28 2.31 2.31 2.27 2.33 .10 .20
(0.79) (0.80) (0.82) (0.80) (0.83) (0.84) (0.84) (0.84) (0.89) (0.89) (0.86) (0.87)
10th 121,671 — — — 2.23 2.18 2.21 2.16 2.13 2.18 2.21 2.29 2.34 2.34 2.33 2.37 .18 .30
(0.77) (0.78) (0.80) (0.79) (0.77) (0.80) (0.81) (0.82) (0.83) (0.83) (0.84) (0.85)
12th 100,570 2.34 2.32 2.33 2.31 2.29 2.26 2.21 2.23 2.25 2.23 2.38 2.36 2.43 2.39 2.49 .20 .33
(0.74) (0.73) (0.76) (0.76) (0.78) (0.78) (0.78) (0.80) (0.80) (0.79) (0.83) (0.81) (0.83) (0.83) (0.81)
Subjective
isolation
8th 125,652 — — — 2.68 2.53 2.49 2.45 2.43 2.46 2.51 2.59 2.59 2.59 2.56 2.62 .05 .16
(1.16) (1.16) (1.17) (1.16) (1.16) (1.16) (1.19) (1.20) (1.22) (1.22) (1.21) (1.21)
10th 122,578 — — — 2.73 2.61 2.60 2.52 2.46 2.56 2.59 2.70 2.73 2.74 2.72 2.74 .01 .25
(1.11) (1.12) (1.14) (1.12) (1.10) (1.14) (1.12) (1.15) (1.15) (1.17) (1.16) (1.18)
12th 101,584 2.96 2.92 2.91 2.87 2.82 2.74 2.63 2.63 2.68 2.68 2.83 2.81 2.85 2.83 3.03 .07 .36
(1.03) (1.02) (1.04) (1.05) (1.08) (1.08) (1.07) (1.12) (1.11) (1.11) (1.14) (1.15) (1.14) (1.15) (1.12)
Social network
isolation
8th 126,461 — — — 1.82 1.85 1.86 1.87 1.89 1.87 1.89 1.97 2.04 2.03 1.99 2.04 .21 .14
(1.02) (1.05) (1.06) (1.06) (1.05) (1.02) (1.02) (1.08) (1.14) (1.13) (1.10) (1.10)
10th 123,156 — — — 1.73 1.75 1.81 1.79 1.80 1.80 1.83 1.88 1.95 1.94 1.94 2.00 .29 .20
(0.91) (0.93) (0.98) (0.95) (0.97) (0.96) (0.94) (0.98) (0.98) (1.00) (1.01) (1.05)
12th 101,391 1.73 1.71 1.75 1.74 1.75 1.77 1.79 1.82 1.82 1.80 1.93 1.91 2.01 1.95 1.96 .29 .15
(0.79) (0.78) (0.83) (0.83) (0.84) (0.85) (0.86) (0.91) (0.91) (0.85) (0.95) (0.89) (0.97) (0.93) (0.90)
Single item on
loneliness
8th 129,965 — — — 2.38 2.23 2.23 2.22 2.19 2.18 2.27 2.40 2.42 2.42 2.40 2.49 .08 .22
(1.39) 25% (1.37) 22% (1.38) 22% (1.36) 22% (1.36) 22% (1.35) 22% (1.38) 23% (1.40) 27% (1.43) 28% (1.42) 28% (1.41) 27% (1.40) 28%
10th 125,263 — — — 2.51 2.38 2.39 2.33 2.27 2.38 2.41 2.52 2.59 2.63 2.60 2.65 .10 .28
(1.36) 28% (1.36) 25% (1.37) 25% (1.34) 23% (1.31) 22% (1.35) 25% (1.32) 25% (1.37) 29% (1.39) 33% (1.39) 33% (1.38) 31% (1.40) 33%
12th 103,467 2.85 2.82 2.81 2.78 2.73 2.62 2.49 2.50 2.53 2.51 2.68 2.69 2.75 2.69 3.00 .11 .37
(1.31) 36% (1.29) 34% (1.30) 34% (1.31) 33% (1.34) 33% (1.32) 29% (1.30) 26% (1.32) 27% (1.32) 28% (1.31) 26% (1.34) 32% (1.37) 34% (1.37) 34% (1.37) 33% (1.38) 39%

Note. Dashes indicate that the survey was not conducted during those years; d ¼ difference in standard deviations from the first group of years to the last; all differences d > .03 are significant at p < .05 or
lower; standard deviations are given in parentheses; and for the single item, the percent who agreed (combining 4 ¼ mostly agree and 5 ¼ agree) is also shown.
Twenge et al. 1905

2.5

2.4
Loneliness item average

12th
2.3
10th

8th

2.2

2.1

Year

Figure 5. Mean loneliness, 6-item scale, U.S. 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, 1977–2017.

0.4

0.3

0.2
Internet

0.1
Loneliness
Z-score

Social media
-0.1

-0.2 In-person
social
interaction
-0.3

-0.4

Year

Figure 6. Internet use, loneliness, social media use, and time spent on in-person social interaction
(Z-scored), U.S. 10th graders, 2006–2017. Note. Data on Internet and social media use adapted
from Twenge et al. (2018).
1906 Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 36(6)

2.9

2.8

2.7 Low in-

person
Loneliness mean

social
interaction
2.6
High in-
person
social
2.5 interaction

2.4

2.3
Low social media use High social media use

Figure 7. Low and high (+1 SD) in-person social interaction and low and high social media use
(never vs. almost every day) and feelings of loneliness, 8th and 10th graders, 2009–2017.

those low in in-person social interaction, F(1, 3357) ¼ 12.37, p < .001, d ¼ .16 but not
for those high in in-person social interaction, F(1, 4510) ¼ .46, p ¼ .50, d ¼ .05.

Discussion
iGen adolescents spent less time interacting with their peers in person during their
leisure time, with college-bound high school seniors in the mid-2010s (vs. the late
1980s) spending an hour less a day on in-person social interaction. The decline in
in-person social interaction was robust and appeared across a wide array of activities. It
appeared in activities usually involving leaving home (going out, partying, going to
movies) as well those that can be enjoyed at home (getting together with friends). It
appeared in activities that could involve parental supervision (getting together with
friends, socializing with friends), as well as those less likely to be supervised (going
out without parents). It appeared in activities that might be replaced by online con-
veniences (shopping at a mall) as well as those that cannot be fully replaced by online
experiences (partying, getting together with friends, going out). The decline appeared
in activities that parents might question (partying, riding in a car for fun, going to bars)
as well as in those parents would likely support (socializing with friends, going to
movies). The decline appeared when questions were asked in terms of hours per week
(in the college sample) and when questions were asked in terms of rough frequency (in
the 8th, 10th, and 12th grade samples).
Twenge et al. 1907

The decline in in-person social interaction occurred at the same time that digital
media use among adolescents increased (Anderson & Jiang, 2018; Twenge et al., 2018).
Of course, as this research is correlational rather than experimental, we cannot determine
whether the increase in digital media use is the cause of the declines in the time spent on
in-person social interaction. However, some alternative explanations seem unlikely
given available data. For example, recent adolescents spend less time on paid work and
homework and about the same amount of time on extracurricular activities (Twenge &
Park, 2019). Thus, recent adolescents have more, not less, leisure time to spend on
social interaction. Economic explanations are also unlikely, as the U.S. economy was
expanding and unemployment falling during the time of the largest decline in in-person
social interaction (2011–2017).

Displacement versus complementarity

These data support time displacement for social interaction at the cohort level, with the
average adolescent now spending less time on in-person social interaction and more time
on digital media and electronic communication than adolescents in the past. However, at
the individual level, adolescents who spend more time with friends in person also spend
more time on social media, supporting complementarity.
These results point to a possible explanation of inconsistencies across studies
investigating these issues. Consistent with our cohort-level findings, two studies found
declines in face-to-face social interaction in samples of non-U.S. adults (Patulny &
Seaman, 2017; Vilhelmson, Elldér, & Thulin, 2018) collected anew each year. In
contrast, when individuals were followed longitudinally or assessed cross-sectionally,
social media use promoted the development of strong ties in core discussion networks
(Vriens & van Ingen, 2018) and was linked to more face-to-face interaction (Hall,
Kearney, & Xing, 2018; Lima et al., 2017). This distinction between the individual and
group level of analysis may help resolve the debate in the literature over displacement
versus complementarity of in-person social interaction and social media. In particular,
as an individual uses more social media, the individual also accrues greater social
capital and opportunities for in-person interaction, especially if the person is also
socially and technologically competent and sociable. At the cohort or group level,
however, time is inelastic and digital media time may displace face-to-face interaction
time (Twenge et al., 2018).
One way of discerning if this displacement is related to the quality of relational life is
to investigate trends in subjective loneliness. We found that self-reports of loneliness
rose sharply among adolescents after 2010, during the same time period that in-person
social interaction declined and digital media use increased. However, in the absence of
the opportunity for random assignment, we cannot say with certainty that this rise was
caused by the decline in in-person social interaction or the increase in digital media use.
We did find that in-person social interaction frequency was linked to less loneliness, and
that social media use was associated with slightly more loneliness when in-person social
interaction frequency was controlled. This, too, is based on correlation, leaving open the
question of causation. However, some longitudinal evidence suggests that social media
use precedes increases in loneliness and not vice versa, whereas in-person social
1908 Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 36(6)

interaction is linked to declines in loneliness (Kross et al., 2013). In addition, a random-

assignment experiment found that young adults who limited their social media use (vs.
continuing normal use) reported less loneliness (Hunt, Marx, Lipson, & Young, 2018). It
is also possible that the increased popularity of social media increases loneliness more
indirectly by raising expectations for social interaction, given that social media increases
the number of people one communicates with. If face-to-face interaction stays the same
or declines as expectations for social interactions rise, loneliness may increase.

Limitations
The time use items in these surveys have limitations. First, they are retrospective, asking
participants to reflect on past activities, rather than contemporaneous time-diary studies,
the gold standard in time use research. Fortunately, comparisons of survey responses and
experience sampling find that the two are very similar, especially for regularly occurring
activities (Sonnenberg, Bettina, Michaela, Cornelia, & Wagner, 2012).
The 8th, 10th, and 12th grade surveys used broad response categories (e.g., “at least
once a month,” “almost every day”) for many time use items, limiting their precision.
This was particularly problematic for the social media item, which has a severe lack of
variance in recent years when the vast majority of adolescents visited these sites every
day (Twenge et al., 2018); unfortunately, this was the only digital media use item asked
of the same participants who completed the loneliness items, likely severely suppressing
the size of the correlations in these analyses. Studies measuring social media use in hours
have found stronger associations with loneliness (e.g., Primack et al., 2017). Although
the items asking for hours a week are somewhat more precise, they have their own
limitations, as participants had to estimate the number of hours they spent on each
activity in broad groupings. We were also not able to examine what adolescents are
doing with their social media time. For example, interacting with local friends and
interacting with those outside one’s in-person social circle may have varying impact.

Implications and conclusions

The trend away from in-person social interaction may have implications for the well-
being and social functioning of adolescents. First, less time on in-person social inter-
action may impact social skills; future research should examine cohort trends in social
skills. Irrespective of its cause, the sharp rise in loneliness among adolescents may have
implications for physical and mental health. Loneliness is correlated with immune
system dysfunction (Pressman et al., 2005), reductions in sleep quality (Cacioppo et al.,
2002), and eating disturbances (Ponzetti, 1990). Loneliness is also a major risk factor for
depression (Cacioppo, Hawkley, & Thisted, 2010), including among adolescents
(Koenig & Abrams, 1999). In fact, major depressive episode and self-harm both
increased among U.S. adolescents between 2011 and 2017 (Mercado, Holland, & Lee-
mis, 2017; Mojtabai, Olfson, & Han, 2016; Twenge, Cooper, Joiner, Duffy, & Binau,
2019) in a pattern very similar to the increase in loneliness, suggesting that the shift away
from in-person social interaction and toward digital media may have other psychological
implications as well (Twenge, Martin, & Campbell, 2018).
Twenge et al. 1909

In conclusion, iGen adolescents spend less time than earlier cohorts interacting with
their peers in person during their leisure time. These trends occurred at the same time as a
marked increase in loneliness. As digital media encompasses more of adolescents’ time,
it is important to recognize the potential costs, which may include less in-person social
interaction and more loneliness.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

ORCID iD
Jean M. Twenge https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6542-8281

Supplemental material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Open research statement

As part of IARR’s encouragement of open research practices, the authors have provided the
following information: This research was not pre-registered. The data and materials used in the
research are available. The data and materials can be obtained at: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/
icpsrweb/NAHDAP/series/35/studies and https://heri.ucla.edu/publications-tfs/.

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