A YouTube video titled ‘I don’t have any friends’ has racked up over half a million views in just a month, and it’s not hard to see why it struck a nerve. For a growing number of young people across England, loneliness isn’t just an occasional feeling — it’s become a way of life.
Tess Lavanda, a London-based content creator, has built an entire online following around the topic of solitude. Her Instagram reels — with titles like ‘I turned 22 alone’ and ‘Feeling alone this summer is OK’ — pull in thousands of views and hundreds of comments from people who say they feel exactly the same way. The response she’s getting isn’t just engagement. It’s a signal.
So what’s actually going on? Why are young people in England finding it so hard to make and keep friends?
Experts and young people themselves point to a mix of factors that have quietly combined over the past decade to make genuine social connection harder than ever.
Social media is the obvious starting point. Platforms that were supposed to bring people together have, for many, done the opposite. Scrolling through highlight reels of other people’s social lives can make your own feel emptier by comparison. Online interaction has also replaced a lot of face-to-face time — it’s easier to send a meme than make plans, and easier to cancel plans than admit you’re struggling.
The pandemic made things significantly worse. Young people who were already navigating the tricky transition from school to university, or from education into work, suddenly had those pathways cut off. The friendships that normally form through shared physical spaces — classrooms, offices, pubs, house parties — simply didn’t happen for a lot of people during those years. And when restrictions lifted, picking up where things left off wasn’t as straightforward as many had hoped.
Mental health is another major piece of the puzzle. Rates of anxiety and depression among young people in England have risen sharply in recent years, and both conditions can make socialising feel overwhelming. When you’re already running on empty, the effort required to build and maintain friendships can feel like too much. Cancelling becomes a habit. Isolation creeps in.
Financial pressure plays a role too. The cost of living crisis has hit young people in England particularly hard. Going out costs money. Moving to a new city for work means starting from scratch socially, often in expensive areas where people are too stretched to spend much on socialising. Many young people are working longer hours in multiple jobs just to cover rent, leaving little time or energy for a social life.
There’s also a structural problem that doesn’t get talked about enough. England doesn’t have many genuinely free, low-pressure spaces where adults can meet people and form friendships organically. The local pub — once a community hub — has been disappearing for years. Youth clubs, community centres and other shared spaces have been hit hard by funding cuts. Without those third spaces, people are left to either spend money they don’t have or stay home.
For young men in particular, the friendship crisis can be especially acute. Research consistently shows that men tend to have fewer close friendships than women, and are less likely to talk openly about loneliness. The rise of online communities — some helpful, some not — has partly filled that gap, but it’s not the same as having real people around.
What makes the situation feel particularly strange is that young people today are more connected than any generation in history, at least on paper. They have smartphones, social media, messaging apps and video calls. And yet the comments flooding into videos like Lavanda’s suggest that for many, all that connectivity hasn’t translated into actual closeness.
There are no easy fixes here. Loneliness among young people isn’t something that can be solved with an app or a government campaign. It requires investment in community spaces, better mental health support, and a broader cultural shift in how we talk about friendship and vulnerability.
But the fact that a video called ‘I don’t have any friends’ has been watched half a million times in a single month suggests one thing pretty clearly — a lot of young people in England are relieved just to know they’re not alone in feeling alone.