The feeling of loneliness in children: data from the survey of children and parents in the project «Children Wellbeing Index»

Author: Tarasov I., Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation (Russia)

Keywords

Children Wellbeing, Children Wellbeing Index, evidence-based policy, survey

Abstract

The feeling of loneliness is a multiple phenomenon, that affects many sides of children’s wellbeing. Due to realize “Russian Child Wellbeing Index” project since 2021 Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation has been collecting “children’s voices” – the survey data of children at the age 10-17 and their parents. This information allows us to talk about wellbeing from six points of view - domains: education, health, material wellbeing, self-realization, security and social relations. Apart from main questions for indicate domains values, there are some supplementary questions, needed for better and wider understanding of wellbeing. One of them is “How often do you feel yourself lonely?” in children’s questionnaire, and same one in parents’ questionnaire. So, the report is based on analysis of 230 000 children and their parents responds regarding the feeling of loneliness. The main outcome is – there is a stable connection between the regularity of the feeling of loneliness and general children wellbeing. Students, who often feel themselves lonely also think that their classmates threaten them worse, they more frequently encountered with bulling, at home their parents scream at them more often, than in typical families and the number of scandals in their families are also bigger. The main risk factors for loneliness are identified - the inability to be heard by parents and adults (to a lesser extent this applies to peers), as well as psychological or even physical violence against a child. Moreover, children’s loneliness relates with such parameters as overall life satisfaction, the presence of their own items and a room, the presence of bulling at school and some others. In comparison with children responds parents’ assessment often belittle role of positive factors and exaggerate role of negative features. Especially it is true for question about relations between the child and his family.

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