ABSTRACT

Divorce and conflicts within the family make both parents and children lonely. Mutual abuse and attack to each other among the 14-year-olds in the UK are an important source of loneliness. Growing up in households with serious conflicts is strongly associated with loneliness in adulthood, although the effect varies across different European countries. Sexual abuse by adults usually comes with other forms of abuse and makes the abused several times more likely to be frequently lonely. Online abuse could cause an even bigger damage to its victims due to its large scale of public exposure. Among the adult populations in Europe, those who have been discriminated are much more likely to be lonely, with a noticeable variation across the countries. The relationship between each of the three forms of trust (personal, social, and political) and loneliness is studied for both children and the adults in Europe; generally speaking, those with a higher level of trust of others enjoy a lower risk to frequent loneliness.