Childline’s tips on tackling loneliness are helpful. But Christians should go further.

This month Childline revealed that that they ran nearly 5,000 online or telephone counselling sessions with youth and children in 2023-24. There are lots of issues that worry youth and children but, in those sessions, the main concern was loneliness.  This isn’t an outlying report. The Office for National Statistics said something similar about the same time period. Loneliness, it seems, is a big problem.

The Problem

The reasons the youth and children counselled by Childline felt lonely ranged from the problem of moving house and having to make new friends and modern-day parents working long hours, through to damaging experiences of bullying, onto the contemporary issue of Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) when seeing others having fun on social media.

One 11-year-old told Childline:

“I feel so lonely at school, I only really have one friend. What’s harder though is I feel I can’t talk about how much it upsets me. My parents seem annoyed or judgmental when I try to talk about my feelings.” 

The Solution

The statistics are bad, and the comments are heartbreaking, so what can be done? Childline give some great tips for parents, guardians and other significant adults, including: 

• Communicate openly: Encourage children to talk about their feelings and listen without judgement.
• Discover what’s causing the problem: Gently explore why they might be feeling this way and validate their emotions.
• Encourage socialising: Help children find opportunities to connect with peers through hobbies, clubs, or activities.
• Help them build their confidence: Celebrate their strengths and achievements and remind them of the positive relationships in their lives.
• Build a supportive environment: Loneliness isn’t something that can be resolved with one conversation. It is important to create an environment of openness where a child can talk to you about their feelings and any struggles they may be facing. 

The Good News of the Gospel

Those are great pieces of advice we can all act on but as Christians we have more to say and do. The old joke is that with Christians the answer is always Jesus, but the Bible and Christian experience testifies to the truth of that in this situation.  Jesus is a friend that young people can know through his Spirit and in doing so we become children of a loving heavenly father invited into a close relationship with God himself. This is good news for youth and children feeling lonely. 

But before we buy into an overly individualistic approach let’s remember that when youth and children become children of a loving heavenly father they do so in communion with others – they become part of the body of Christ, the church. This is also good news for youth and children feeling lonely. 

Now some outside the church might say that if the church fulfils some of what Childline is recommending then that’s great. If the church encourages socialising and provides a supportive environment, then people might be all for it even if they don’t believe what Christians believe. We can accept that at one level; if there are positive social benefits from being associated with church then great. But there is so much more that needs to be said, so much more that the church brings to youth and children who are feeling lonely and one of the big things that needs to be recognised is the importance of purpose. 

In 3 Big Questions that Change Every Teenager the American youth ministry expert Kara Powell suggests that every young person needs to address three main questions as they grow up: who am I? (identity), where do I fit in? (belonging) and what am I here for? (purpose).

These are all difficult to answer without God in the picture. Without God as an external point of reference, youth and children don’t have an anchor to help answer the question: who am I? Today’s mantra is you can be whoever you want to be, which sounds nice and freeing but ultimately it is unstable and places an unbearable pressure on young people as they become solely responsible for constructing who they are. Because of this they also don’t have a secure place to belong. If the people I want to be with are potentially going to change who they are tomorrow then any group or tribe I become a part of is open to break up at any moment. 

But the real kicker when it comes to loneliness is purpose. It’s interesting that as good as the list from Childline is (and it is good), there is nothing in there about purpose. The Bible is clear however that you cannot divorce identity and belonging from purpose. 

When God says that Adam was alone and that it was not good (Genesis 2:18) what did he mean? Well, the answer is in the context of Genesis 2. In verses 19 and 20 we hear that Adam has work to do, the Garden of Eden isn’t Centre Parcs. Part of what it means to be human in God’s good world is to be constructively engaged with the world. But no ‘helper’ is found for Adam, no one to help with looking after the earth. Adam is alone not in the sense that he needs a companion, a friend or a lover, those things are important but they’re not what is meant when we hear that Adam is lonely. 

The point here is that humans are created with a specific purpose in mind: constructive engagement with the world and looking after the earth. Just as with identity and belonging, the secular world has no real answer to the question of purpose, that’s why Freddie Mercury sang: ”Does anybody know what we are looking for?” The implication is no. 

The church’s purpose of course is not simply to look after the earth – we don’t live in Genesis 2 times we live post Genesis 3 and the Fall, so part of the purpose of the church is to witness to the goodness of God in sending Jesus to make right all that is wrong. Testifying to God’s saving work has not replaced constructive engagement with the world – it has been added. The purpose of the church and therefore those in the church is to do both. 

Childline’s advice is important, to combat loneliness it’s good to provide a space where youth and children can connect and belong in a general sense, the work of parents is key to this. The firm foundation of an identity in Christ and a belonging in the church are also vital so youth and children can know the blessings of a personal relationship with God and relationships with others in God’s family. But let’s think about not simply inviting youth and children into faith or the church as ends in themselves but a faith and church with a purpose, with a mission. Part of the solution to the big problem of loneliness amongst youth and children is to show them that there is something worth living for, something that is worth doing. That sense of purpose, that meaningful active participation in partnership with others in the church is key to ending the loneliness we see in our society today.