On Monday, the first day of the first week of universities, millions of high school students all over the United Kingdom will check in for their very first day of universities.
A survey of 1,000 students was conducted by YouGov on behalf of the government. The results showed that almost all students will go through periods of isolation, and almost half are concerned that they would be judged if they admit to feeling lonely.
An awareness campaign has been initiated by the Minister for Loneliness, Stuart Andrew, in an effort to find a solution to the problem. Through collaborations with organizations such as Student Minds, Student Roost, Student Radio Association, and Student Minds, he hopes to encourage students in universities to be more open with one another and engage in conversation.
According to him, “going to universities can be the biggest transition young people have faced,” and he spoke from experience. Because we want them to have a positive experience at universities and to do well in their studies, we are emphasizing the need of having meaningful conversations with other students in the same year as them about how they are feeling.
The United Kingdom’s government has identified the prevention and treatment of loneliness as one of its top priorities. Since 2018, it and its partners have invested more than £80 million on the problem, of which more than £34 million has been put toward alleviating the loneliness caused by the epidemic. In addition, there was an investment of £3.6 million made into Student Space, an online platform for mental health and wellness that will provide online mental health help to all students in England and Wales until the year 2026.
The program director of the Campaign to End Loneliness, Robin Hewings, praised the initiative and expressed his excitement about its potential. He stated that “there is real value in this campaign,” and I agree with him. “Students who are chronically lonely are more likely to say that their classes are not a good value for the money and that their expectations have not been met. These students are approximately twice as likely to be considering dropping out of school.” According to the statistics, students who suffer from chronic loneliness are more likely to be members of the LGBTQ+ community, members of DE social groupings, and females. According to what he said, concrete action “is largely best done by universities.”
However, other professionals and students have pointed to the financing for Andrew’s campaign, which comes from the marketing budget for the years 2023 to 2024, as evidence that Andrew’s effort is insincere. This cash comes in the amount of £445,000.
“Loneliness has become a popular notion for politicians to talk about, but it’s rarely followed by a promise of real money,” said Paul Crawford, a professor of health humanities at the School of Health Sciences at Nottingham University and a director at the Institute of Mental Health. “Loneliness has become a popular notion for politicians to talk about,” he said. “This effort appears to be about constructing something without any infrastructure — because all of that has been destroyed as a result of cuts made by the government.
“This campaign ignores the fact that the opportunity for these young people to meet and learn how to build relationships during their childhoods was eliminated when their libraries, youth centers, and swimming pools were closed, and their public spaces became less well-maintained and less welcoming as a result of the government policy of austerity,” he added. “This campaign ignores the fact that the opportunity for these young people to meet and learn how to build relationships during their childhoods was eliminated.”
“If I were a younger person, I could get the impression that this campaign isn’t genuinely about me. He continued by saying, “I would think it has something to do with managing trends in political debates and concerns.”
“anything that places responsibility on the individual to connect with others, without any meaningful infrastructure supporting that connection, is dangerous because it risks exacerbating existing loneliness and perpetuating a sense of blame,” said Dr. Katie Wright-Bevans, a lecturer in psychology at Keele University who has written about loneliness among undergraduates.
“It’s frustrating when politicians come out with these platitudes and place responsibility on the individual to do something about what is fundamentally a community ill and not an individual ill,” she continued. “The problem isn’t with the individual; the problem is with the community.”
Instead of “tokenistic attempts to advise individuals to simply connect with others,” Georgia Brakespear stated that intervention needs to be invested in projects at the social and communal level.
Brakespear, a music therapist who has investigated and published the paper Young Adults Dealing With Loneliness At University after she experienced from loneliness as an undergraduate, wondered how the campaign aids those who are suffering from loneliness but who are unable to talk to others or join a group or club. Brakespear’s experience with loneliness inspired her to research and publish the document.
She stated, “I think this campaign could make students feel more angry than supported,” and I agree with her sentiment. “The government is acknowledging the problem, but all they have to offer is something that just so happens to be totally free for them and needs no more of a commitment than a few speeches. That is not going to be a solution that works over the long term.”
However, according to Dr. Emily Long, who is working on a research that is being financed by the ESRC to investigate loneliness and wellness among young adults, the campaign is “a bit of a double-edged sword.”
She stated that “on the one hand, talking about loneliness, acknowledging it as a problem, and working to reduce the stigma for young people/students is very helpful.” “On the other hand,” she said, “working to reduce the stigma for older people is very helpful.”
“But on the other hand, loneliness is not an individual issue, and I would be hesitant to promote an agenda that places the responsibility directly on young people themselves by implementing methods to develop their social skills, for example. It is not sufficient to just increase social interaction, such as by mandating that students have sufficient conversation with one another, because we know from our research that the presence or absence of intimate, supportive connections is a factor in loneliness.
According to Chloe Field, the vice president of the National Union of Students for higher education, the campaign is the most recent illustration of the government “using mental health as a buzzword without doing anything practical about it.”
She stated, “This is very basic level advice,” which was her comment. “There is constant communication between the students. The difficulty is that there is no one to go to for counseling and there is no treatment because of a crumbling NHS – and now that education is so expensive, students are required to work long hours in hazardous part-time jobs, frequently working late into the night after they have finished their studies. They have little time to socialize or have fun because they are constantly busy. It should not come as a surprise that they are lonely.
