Schools can reconnect the loneliest generation
If this is a crisis of connection, we need to restore the experiences that make connection possible, argues Fiona Spellman
New research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has unearthed troubling findings about the experience of growing up in England today. The report presents a compelling picture of childhood increasingly characterised by loneliness, uncertainty and a weakening sense of connection.
The proportion of young people with no close friends has reportedly risen five-fold since 2014, while satisfaction with friendships among younger teenagers has also declined.
The paradox of modern childhood is that children have more ways to communicate than ever, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have more opportunities for meaningful connection.
Endless scrolling is the junk food of social life: immediately available, highly stimulating and engineered to keep us consuming, but incapable of providing the nourishment that comes from a genuine relationship.
The COVID pandemic is an important part of this story.
When schools closed, we discovered that education could be delivered in a very narrow sense through a screen. Lessons could be recorded. Worksheets could be uploaded. Assignments could be submitted electronically. But something essential was missing.
Schools are places where children encounter other people. They form friendships. They learn how to negotiate disagreement, cooperate, read social cues, manage conflict and discover where they fit. Much of this cannot be replicated online.
There is another aspect of the IPPR report that deserves attention: the extent to which teenagers are becoming disconnected even from themselves.
Connection with other people also depends on understanding ourselves. We need words for what we feel, and the confidence to express those feelings, if we are to build and sustain relationships. This is where reading can play a crucial role.
As Olivia Richards argues in her recent SHINE article, stories can give children language for feelings and experiences that they cannot yet articulate themselves. They can provide a safe distance from which to explore identity, friendship, loss, anxiety and belonging. Crucially, the power is not simply in reading the words but in the conversation that follows: children listen to one another, test ideas, encounter perspectives beyond their own and develop the language to understand themselves and others.
This is precisely the kind of connection that a digitally saturated childhood can struggle to provide.
A classroom in which children regularly encounter stories and discuss them together is doing something profoundly social. It is giving children opportunities to practise empathy. It is expanding their emotional vocabulary. It is showing them that other people can see the same situation differently. It is giving them a language through which they can make sense of their own experiences.
If this is a crisis of connection, we need to restore the experiences that make connection possible. Schools may be one of the few places left where children routinely encounter people they would not otherwise meet – and have to learn to listen to them, disagree with them, cooperate with them and understand them. Real connection is not an optional extra to education. It is one of the things education is for.