‘Thousands of young people feeling lonely’

THOUSANDS OF youngsters are feeling lonely and misunderstood, Childline has said.

The helpline provided the equivalent of 11 counselling sessions a day in 2016/17, 4,063 in total, to children and young people suffering from loneliness.

The issue is usually associated with older people, Childline said, but it is getting calls from children as young as six as today’s younger generation struggle with the pressures of growing up in the modern world and a lack of adults to talk to.

Girls were five times more likely to get make contact about loneliness than boys.

In total, there were 2,978 counselling sessions abut loneliness involving girls, compared 582 with boys. In 503 counselling sessions, the gender of the youngsters involved was unknown.

The NSPCC-run service suggested that counsellors are of- ten reporting youngsters telling them that they feel invisible, misunderstood and like those close to them struggle to understand how they feel.

Childline said it had specifically recorded loneliness for the first time as an issue as it had seen increasing numbers of youngsters raising it.

Dame Esther Rantzen, founder and president of Childline, said: “I think we in the adult world are addicted to being busy, and that our children and young people are suffering as a result.

“Of course, many of us have to work hard, couples may need to take on several jobs to boost their income, but sometimes that leaves too little time for the people we care about most, our children.”

has been campaigning to highlight the issue of loneliness and social isolation since February 2014.