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What do you do when you don’t have any friends?
A timely discussion of loneliness among children and adolescents – a far-too-prevalent problem in contemporary society.
There are lonely people in every age group, but especially among the young. As many as one-fifth of children and adolescents suffer from at least occasional loneliness and experience anxiety that they don’t have anyone to turn to: a trustworthy confidant, a friendly ear, or even just someone to talk to. Social and emotional loneliness of this calibre has both immediate effects on the lives of young people and far-reaching consequences that may well be irreversible.
Zero Friends reviews the latest research on loneliness and delves into the phenomenon through the personal stories of children and adolescents. It asks what we as a society could do so not a single child has to ever feel left out again.
Estonian (Koolibri)
Russian (Alpina)
Estonian edition
Finnish edition
Shortlisted for The Best Book of 2015 Award (The Grand Finnish Journalism Prize)
9 Foreword
13 Loneliness
18 Alone vs. lonely
23 Campaign for well-being in primary schools
29 Reality of lonely children – lack of friends
33 Social and emotional loneliness
42 Emotionally lonely boys
46 Sense of detachment
50 “Is it ok if someone is lonely?”- children’s thoughts on the word loneliness
53 Measuring possibilities
63 How common is the loneliness of children and young people
70 But it is girls who are the lonely ones?
74 Unpleasant effects of loneliness
79 Why is it difficult to get rid of loneliness?
86 Loneliness and other worries
97 Social anxiety / social phobia
106 Depression
115 The physicality of loneliness
118 Can you catch loneliness?
120 Where does loneliness derive from?
120 The situational factors
121 Being different, especially one’s own experience on being different from others
122 Skills, both social and cognitive, both learned and absorbed
123 Social reputation
124 Mistreatment or ignorance during childhood
126 Poor contexts
129 Is loneliness inherited?
134 Loneliness in a relationship – can you be lonely together?
135 Sometimes it seems that nothing has any meaning any longer
138 Cries for help
144 The difficulty of helping- why should I?
146 If, then, however, I want to be the one who is different from the others
149 Interventions for solitude
156 Everyday interventions
158 Social competence
163 Parents as a support to the lonely
173 Our joint responsibility for the youth
180 What do the lonely children and youth want us to do?
188 Bibliography
