AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
THE LONELINESS OF ADOLESCENTS FROM SOCIALLY DISADVANTAGED BACKGROUND
a
KATARÍNA ŠIŇANSKÁ
Department of Social Work, Faculty of Arts, Pavol Jozef Šafárik
University in Košice, Moyzesova 9, 040 59 Košice, Slovak
Republic
email:
a
katarina.sinanska@upjs.sk
The paper was created in the framework of the grant project Vega 1/0285/18 entitled
"Risk behaviours of adolescents as clients of social work due to their loneliness".
Abstract: Every individual need social contact with other people in his or her life, to
feel belonging, solidarity. If these needs are not fulfilled, he/she is threatened by
loneliness, which significantly affects the quality of life of a person. It is particularly
difficult to experience loneliness during adolescence. This alone is challenging for
effective coping. Moreover, if the adolescent comes from a socially dependent
environment, which is often not very stimulating, experiencing loneliness can lead to
many negative phenomena, such as risk behaviour of a young person. The paper offers
theoretical background and results of empirical research on the issue of experiencing
loneliness in adolescents, while specifically focusing on young people from socially
disadvantaged background.
Keywords: loneliness, adolescence, socially disadvantaged background
1 Introduction
Humans are social beings, they need other people in their life,
they need to feel belonging and love, they need to be a part of
different social groups. Yet, in the context of a very fast lifestyle
of modern man, each of us is threatened by loneliness. It belongs
to population global diseases of modern age. It represents an
unwanted matter, reduces the quality of life, and while some
people can handle this situation themselves, others need to seek
professional help to deal with it. Loneliness threatens not only
the standard life of individuals, but the functioning of society as
a whole.
More and more attention is paid to issue of loneliness and its
experiencing in adolescents. Adolescence is itself a challenging
developmental period, adolescents often experience feelings of
helplessness, insecurity, isolation, insignificance, or loneliness,
and during this period they need to have an effective social
network consisting of healthy supportive relationships around
them. Their experiencing and consequently way of behaviour
depend heavily on this. If a young person comes from a socially
disadvantaged background, the whole developmental period is
even more difficult for them.
2 Loneliness - a modern age disease?
Loneliness affects everyone, it troubles in a certain form and in
certain life stages both young and old, married and single, rich
and poor, educated or without education, sick or without health
problems (Žiaková et al., 2008). Žitniaková Gurgová (2013)
characterizes it as a subjective experience that results from our
interpretation of events, a condition that is unpleasant to a
person. And although, in the short term, loneliness can be
positive (psycho hygiene) - it creates space to think about your
life, about solving life situations, to recover strength, it helps to
calm down, to find a way to yourself, to rest from other people,
long-term loneliness affects people negatively, causes
behavioural changes. Lichner (2018) classifies, for example,
feelings of depressed mood, insecurity, shyness, social isolation,
low self-esteem or anxiety to loneliness symptoms. Šarafín
(2010) adds that this undesirable condition can escalate into
more serious chronic problems, and it is therefore important to
start tackling it in the early stages.
Solitude is not a bad condition, but loneliness can become one.
The feeling of loneliness refers to our perception of relationships
and it is not related to objective reality, whether we are part of a
group, a class, a crowd, whether we are in long-term
relationships or not. A lonely person considers his/her
involvement in social relations to be weaker, unsatisfactory than
he/she wishes. There are many people who, even if they live
alone, do not feel loneliness intensely, and vice versa, there are
many people who have organized relationships and experience
loneliness to varying degrees (Žiaková et al., 2008; Müller de
Morais, 2015). In this case, Nakonečný (2009) talks about the
absence of an element of intimate sharing in relationships.
3 Experiencing loneliness in the context of adolescence and
socially disadvantaged background
Adolescence is one of the developmental periods of the
individual, during which the most significant changes occur, not
only in biological (sexual maturation, changes in appearance ...),
but also psychosocial (change of lifestyle, changes in interests,
values, social status ...) area (Vágnerová, 2012). It shapes the
identity of the adolescent (Erickson, 2015).
A young person tries to break away from his/her family and to
integrate into society as an independent individual, seeking
his/her own place in it. His/her self-appraisal and self-esteem are
formed. He/she is trying different alternatives and is looking for
the limits of his/her possibilities, so he/she sometimes behaves
extremely. He/she thinks about life priorities, he/she has doubts
about his/her own direction, gives importance to his/her own
experiences, addresses existential questions. He/she is
confronted with various unknown situations, loses his/her usual
stereotypes, often lacks regular constructive communication.
Separation from family, friends can lead to the absence of more
intimate contacts and subsequent isolation, because even in this
“detaching” period he/she needs to feel the support of the loved
ones and the community. If he/she does not experience satisfying
personal interactions, he/she does not have suitable social
contacts, it may come to the feelings of loneliness and to
loneliness deepening. Such long-term non-fulfillment of the
needs of adolescents can lead to various negative phenomena
such as health disorders, suicidal tendencies, self-harm,
inappropriate sexual behaviour, aggression, committing crimes
or various addictions. According to Tóthová and Žiaková (2019),
eating disorders can also appear among adolescents, as well as
their modern forms associated with alcohol use, current social
demand for healthy eating, physical strength and attractiveness,
loneliness, maladaptive coping with difficult situations,
insufficient social support, social isolation, social exclusion.
If a young person comes from a socially disadvantaged
background, the whole developmental period is even more
challenging for him/her. The most common group in the Slovak
Republic, which is socio-culturally disadvantaged and comes
from a socially excluded community, is the Roma minority
(Burkovičová, 2016). Roma are characterized by different
ethnicity and the complex of factors, including cultural,
linguistic, territorial, social, racial, and also their specific history,
social origin and self-perception. Particular lifestyle and a lower
standard of living domin
ates. (Hudecová, Papšo, Kurčíková,
Seberíni, Vavrinčíková, 2012). These young people are living in
excluded locations that are typical by lack of amenities, often in
catastrophic living conditions. They often have lower
qualification, resulting in more difficult succeeding in the labor
market. They are characterized by increased morbidity. The life
of adolescents from disadvantaged background is not easy,
because as already mentioned, they often face poverty and social
exclusion due to such background (Lukšík, Lemešová, 2013).
4 Selected empirical findings
Based on the above-mentioned theoretical concepts, the main
objective of our research has been to investigate loneliness in a
group of adolescents from socially disadvantaged background.
Using a quantitative approach, we have obtained data based on
the anonymous questionnaire survey method. In the next section,
we used a standardized questionnaire from authors De Jong
Gierveld and Van Tilburg (1999) called OESL, which was
essentially focused on the specific experiencing loneliness of
respondents. The questionnaire consisted of 11 questions that
- 284 -