The changing nature of work, leisure and involvement in society: some possible ideas from an old philosopher

Adolescents’ and young adults’ experiences of loneliness and their thoughts about its alleviation

“…Social media has been shown to impact loneliness negatively in former studies, resulting in feelings of inferiority when seeing what is perceived as other people's exciting lives and broad social networks (Vaarala et al, 2013). An association between loneliness and long-term stress (Segrin et al, 2018) and anxiety has also been found in former studies (Hemberg et al, 2021;Mclntyre et al, 2018;Perlman & Peplau, 1998). Long-term stress has also been shown to lead to negative health risk behaviours such as substance use (Segrin et al, 2018).…”

“…Research has shown that during university studies, adolescents might have difficulties with establishing new relationships, have smaller social network sizes and react to stress more strongly (Tornstam et al, 2010). Identifying with university friendship groups has proven to be protective against negative mental health outcomes (Mclntyre et al, 2018), as has quality-based relationships with peers during college years (Perlman & Peplau, 1998). Zhu et al (2019) explain that improving the school environment can be necessary in promoting adolescents' mental health.…”

“…Loneliness has been associated with physical symptoms and issues in a large number of studies. People who experience loneliness have more somatic symptoms (Stickley et al, 2013;Perlman & Peplau, 1998), depressive symptoms (Madjar et al, 2020;Perlman & Peplau, 1998;Stickley et al, 2016) and symptoms of distress (Mclntyre et al, 2018;Stickley et al, 2016). Lonely individuals also increasingly demonstrate self-reported chronic illnesses, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, deprived selfreported health and more frequent hospitalizations (Richard et al, 2017).…”

“…Increasing opportunities for social interactions has also shown positive effects (Perlman & Peplau, 1998). Having positive parental care (Von Soest et al, 2020), close friendships (Stickley et al, 2016;Von Soest et al, 2020), improving social environments in universities that allows students to identify with university friends (Mclntyre et al, 2018) as well as focusing on healthy family functioning are of importance when it comes to alleviating loneliness (Zhu et al, 2019).…”

Mental health in the built environment

“…Planning on the assumption that the aim is to maximize health and happiness requires a radical change in attitude (Guha, 2018). It is therefore gratifying to note that there are an increasing number of architects who are trying to design for health (a sample of them reviewed in Guha, 2020), and especially trying to collate research on the impact of buildings on mental health: one of us [BC] is, as far as we are aware, the first 'Mental Health Ambassador' designated by an architectural practice (Channon, 2019).…”