Gallup: young American men are the most likely to experience feelings of loneliness

In May 2023, physician Vivek Murthy warned of a silent epidemic of loneliness that affects nearly half of American adults, comparing its consequences to those of smoking and warning of the profound physical, mental and social toll it leaves on all those who suffer from it.

"The impact on mortality of being socially disconnected is similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day," Murthy asserted.

A recent Gallup report revealed that, amid this epidemic of loneliness, young men in the United States are more likely to feel lonely than the rest of the population.

According to the data from the Gallup World Poll for the years 2023 and 2024, 25%of young U.S. men, aged between 15 and 34, said they felt very lonely the day before, a figure far higher than the national average of 18%.

Likewise, men belonging to this demographic group are more likely to feel lonely than their counterparts in the rest of the West, of whom, within the average of the democratic countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), only 15% say they experience feelings of loneliness.

According to the Gallup report, this data may suggest that no other OECD country has a bigger gap than the U.S. between the loneliness felt by young men and that experienced by the rest of the adult population, as across the OECD as a whole, only an average of 15% of young men report feeling lonely compared to 16% of the overall adult average.

According to the data, apart from the USA, only in Iceland and Denmark is the percentage of young men experiencing loneliness higher than that of other adults residing in these countries where 15%of younger men report daily loneliness, compared with 10% and 9%, respectively, of the rest of the population.

Thus, the US stands out for having young men with significantly higher levels of loneliness than the rest of the population.

The data also revealed that in nine other OECD countries, at least one in five young men experience loneliness, such as in "Turkey (29%), France (24%), Ireland (23%) and Canada(22%)."

Conversely, the Gallup report also picked up that younger men are less likely to report feeling lonely than the rest of the population in countries such as, "Slovakia (4% vs. 15%), Greece (15% vs. 25%) and Colombia (14% vs. 23%)."

U.S. men are more stressed and worried on a daily basis

According to the Gallup survey, loneliness is one of the three experiences, along with stress and worry, that young American men report most often as opposed to the rest of the population.

As for stress, 57% of young men in the United States report feeling stressed on a daily basis, as opposed to 48% of other adults. On the other hand, 46% of young men say they experience daily worry, compared with 37% of other adults in the US.

However, the figures handled by Gallup reveal that young men also have experiences in line with the rest of the population, since with respect to other emotions such as sadness, anger, enjoyment, laughter, feeling rested and respected, the levels are similar to those of the rest of the population.

Stress and worries are common in the West

According to the report, in the OECD 42% of younger men report having more stress versus 36% of other adults.

As for worries, across the OECD, 36% of young men and all other adults report feeling worried the previous day and, according to the Gallup survey, only Germany and Sweden show a comparable difference between young men and the rest of the population.

For full methodology and specific survey data, visit Gallup's country-by-country dataset.