Is My Teenager Lonely?

If you are the one feeling lonely, there is a separate guide written for you: How to Deal With Loneliness.

A teenager can be lonely in a full house. Being surrounded by family is different from having friends their own age, and both are different from having one person they can tell anything to. This guide is for parents and for anyone raising a teenager in the Philippines, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older siblings looking after a teenager while a parent works abroad.

Loneliness is common here. In Gallup's 2023 survey, 33 percent of Filipino adults said they had felt lonely for much of the previous day, the highest rate in Southeast Asia, and the World Health Organization reports the highest rates of loneliness among teenagers.

Signs a teenager may be lonely

• They rarely mention friends by name, or the names they used to mention have stopped coming up.
• Weekends and school breaks go by with no plans with anyone their own age.
• They spend most of their free time alone in their room or on their phone, and they seem low rather than content.
• They say things like "Nobody likes me" or "I don't have anyone," even as a joke.
• They have stopped doing things they used to enjoy that involve other people.

Time alone is not a problem in itself, and plenty of teenagers like their own company. The question is whether your teenager seems to want more connection than they have, because that gap is what makes it loneliness.

Common reasons

A change of school or strand. Moving up to senior high, switching schools, or ending up in a different strand can split up a barkada that took years to form.

A parent working abroad. Researchers that studied Filipino teenagers with a parent working overseas found that they felt more emotionally lonely than teenagers whose parents lived at home.

Being bullied. A teenager that is being picked on often pulls away from everyone. If you suspect this, our guide My Child Is Being Bullied covers the signs and what to do.

Friendships that live mostly online. Online friends are real friends, but a teenager that rarely sees anyone in person can feel lonely with a busy phone.

How to bring it up

Lonely teenagers are often embarrassed about it, so a direct "Are you lonely?" tends to get a quick "No." It usually works better to ask about specific people and specific times, in a relaxed moment:

• "Who do you usually eat lunch with these days?"
• "You have not mentioned [friend] in a while. How are things with them?"
• "If you could hang out with anyone from school this weekend, who would it be?"

Then listen more than you talk. Resist fixing it in the same conversation, and avoid comparisons with siblings, cousins, or your own teenage years. If they open up, something like this helps:

"Thank you for telling me. A lot of people your age feel this way, and it can change. If you want, we can figure out a few things to try together."

What helps

Make it easy to see people their age. Say yes when they want to bring classmates home, and make the house an easy place to be (food helps a lot). Cover the fare or snack money for org meetings and practices, and offer rides when you can. Practical things like these decide a surprising amount of a teenager's social life.

Help them find one thing that meets every week. A school org, a sport, a church youth group, a class, or volunteer work can all do this. Friendships form mostly from seeing the same people again and again, so a weekly activity does more than a big one-time event. Let them choose it, since a teenager pushed into something often goes once and stops.

Help with the skill, if the skill is what is missing. Some teenagers simply do not know how to start a conversation or how to turn a classmate into a friend. That can be taught. Our guide to making friends as a teenager is written for them to read themselves.

Spend regular one-on-one time together. Time with you does not replace friends their age, but it gives them one person they can talk to easily while they build the rest. A weekly errand together, a meal out, or a walk is enough.

Don't push big social events. A loud gathering they did not choose, or a "hangout" you arranged with another parent, usually embarrasses a teenager more than it helps.

If a parent is working abroad

For the parent abroad. Calls that only cover grades and chores ("Did you eat? Did you study?") can leave a teenager feeling like they are reporting in. Ask about one specific thing in their life (a friend, a game, a teacher they mentioned last week), and tell them one real thing about yours. A fixed time each week, even a short one, often matters more than long calls now and then.

For the family member at home. Let the teenager talk about missing their parent without being reminded how hard the parent works for them. Both can be true at once, and a teenager that feels they always have to sound grateful may stop saying how they feel.

When to get more help

Loneliness on its own is common, and it often improves with the steps above. Get help sooner if low mood lasts more than two weeks, if your teenager stops eating or sleeping normally or drops things they used to care about, or if they talk about not wanting to be alive. Start with the guidance counselor or a doctor. If you are worried about their safety, call the National Center for Mental Health crisis line (free, 24 hours) at 1553 from a Luzon landline, or 0917-899-8727 or 0966-351-4518 (Globe and TM) and 0908-639-2672 (Smart, Sun, and TNT).

If your teenager has no friends at all right now, our guide My Teenager Has No Friends goes deeper on that situation, including how to tell which kind of problem you are looking at.