Friends play an essential role in the happiness of young single adults, according to results from a survey led by happiness researcher Lisa Walsh of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
"Our study looked at five key indicators—friendship satisfaction, family satisfaction, self-esteem, neuroticism, and extraversion—to identify five different groups of single young adults," Walsh told Newsweek.
"While all of these indicators mattered, friendship satisfaction stood out as the most important. Young singles who were very happy with their friendships were more likely to feel satisfied with their lives overall."
Previous research has suggested that adults in their early 20s may be less happy, on average, than adults at other points in their lives.
But when 1,073 young, single, American adults aged 18 to 24 were surveyed, those who were most satisfied with their friendships were found to be happiest overall.
Happier respondents had more close friends, better physical health, and lower levels of depression and anxiety than those who were less content.
"One of the standout findings from our study is how deeply friendships shape happiness for single emerging adults," the study authors wrote.
"We found that singles who were satisfied with their friendships tended to be happy with their lives, while those dissatisfied with their friendships were less happy.
"In short, the quality of your friendships is a key factor for your wellbeing, especially if you're single."
Walsh told Newsweek that young adults were "navigating a critical period of life, often filled with uncertainty and exploration."
"Whether starting college, getting hired for a new job, or seeking a romantic partner, young adults frequently go through significant personal challenges," she said. "Additionally, singlehood (i.e., not having a committed romantic partner) is on the rise.
"Pew Research Center recently estimated that 41 percent of Americans ages 18–29 are single. Given the increasing numbers of single young adults, understanding their unique social and emotional needs is essential."
The researchers wrote that Gen Z faced additional challenges brought on by social media, online dating, the climate, and so on; and that single people had unique problems linked to living in a society set up for couples and families.
Overall, they found that 37.9 percent of the survey respondents said they were relatively happy, compared with 23.7 percent who said they were unhappy, which the Walsh et al wrote contrasted with misguided stereotypes about singles being miserable.
"The message we hope young people receive is that you don't need a romantic partner to be happy, but you do need satisfying social relationships with other important people in your life like friends and family," said Walsh. "Our findings highlight the importance of friendship for wellbeing, especially if you're young and single."
To analyze young singles' traits in more depth, the scientists split the respondents into five subgroups based on their answers. They said this technique allowed them to identify hidden groups, based on attributes brought to light by their research.
The survey included questions about overall happiness, as well as satisfaction with family, satisfaction with friends, self-esteem, neuroticism—defined as a personality trait where people are likely to be anxious, depressed and more emotionally volatile—and extraversion—referring to sociability, assertiveness and energy.
Those who fit into Profile One were the happiest of all the respondents: 11.1 percent were very satisfied with their friends and family, had very high self-esteem and extraversion, and had very low neuroticism.
They were significantly happier, Walsh et al wrote, than Profile Two: 26.8 percent of the respondents, who were very satisfied with their friendships, quite happy with their families, and had moderate levels of self-esteem and extraversion.
This group also had high levels of neuroticism—anxiousness, depression and emotionality—but were happy overall.
Profile Two was much happier than the largest group, Profile Three, which scored mostly average for family, self-esteem and extraversion, and had somewhat low levels of neuroticism, but were also not particularly fulfilled by their friendships.
The last two groups, Profiles Four and Five—14.6 and 9.1 percent of respondents, respectively—had unfavorable scores almost across the board, with low family satisfaction, self-esteem and extraversion, and high neuroticism.
However, those in Profile Four tended to be happier than those in Profile Five, the main difference being that those in Profile Four had relatively fine levels of friendship satisfaction, whereas those in Profile Five reported low levels of friendship satisfaction.
Those in Profile Five were also the only group where more people did not have a best friend than did; overall, 76.9 percent of the single Gen-Z respondents said they had a best friend, compared with a national average of 59 percent.
Men fared better than women in the study. Even though 67.6 percent of survey respondents were female, Profile One was majority-male, suggesting that young single American men may be happier than young single American women.
The scientists concluded that young single adults might benefit from deliberately creating meaningful, long-term friendships—but that more research was needed to clarify whether friendships caused happiness, or whether the two were just correlated.
Walsh was joined by Calen Horton from Arkoda Research Group, Alaska; independent researcher Reed Kaufman from New York; Anthony Rodriguez from RAND Corporation Boston, Massachusetts; and Victor Kaufman from UCLA.
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Reference
Walsh, L.C., Horton, C., Kaufman, R., Rodriguez, A., Kaufman, V. A. (2024). Heterogeneity in happiness: A latent profile analysis of single emerging adults, PLoS ONE 19(10): e0310196. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310196
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