The suggestion that young people in Ireland feel lonely is not at all surprising to 19-year-old student Alex Griu.
The Moldovan believes Ireland, with its wet and often windy weather, does not have many spaces for people to connect other than bars and cafes.
“I mean, it’s not a secret that socialising here costs a lot and most of it involves pubs and alcohol and stuff like that. I think that’s definitely one of the factors.”
Griu, a first-year psychology student at Trinity College Dublin, says there is much more socialising in open-air settings in her native Moldova. People gather in parks and around recreational sports venues, she says.
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That is less practical here, leading to a greater reliance on commercial venues, she says. Finding the money to meet regularly in cafes, bars and shops can be a challenge for young students, she says.
Griu uses social media to keep in touch with friends, but she has a rule that “we have to meet up in person at least twice a month”. This usually happens in cafes, she says.
“If one person is experiencing poverty, they might decide they can’t go because they don’t have the money to join in the activity. So, they don’t do it and that impacts on them in terms of loneliness,” she says.
Newly published OECD data on the issue does not suggest there are particularly large differences between young men and women in terms of their experience of loneliness, but Griu believes men are more commonly affected.
“I think women are better at making and keeping connections,” she says.
The problem is underestimated, she believes, especially by people who do not look beyond potentially superficial social relationships.
“I think a lot of people don’t understand loneliness,” she says. “They see people who seem to have a lot of friends and think they must be fine, but they don’t realise that you can be surrounded by people and still be alone,” she says.
