Judged by the sheer amount of global media coverage, loneliness rates seem to be an increasingly urgent societal concern. From the late 1970s onward, the life experiences of emerging adults have been changing massively due to societal developments such as increased fragmentation of social relationships, greater mobility opportunities, and changes in communication due to technological innovations. These societal developments might have coincided with an increase in loneliness in emerging adults. In the present preregistered cross-temporal meta-analysis, we examined whether loneliness levels in emerging adults have changed over the last 43 years. Our analysis is based on 449 means from 345 studies with 437 independent samples and a total of 124,855 emerging adults who completed the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale between 1976 and 2019. Averaged across all studies, loneliness levels linearly increased with increasing calendar years (β = .224, 95% CI [.138, .309]). This increase corresponds to 0.56 standard deviations on the UCLA Loneliness Scale over the 43-year studied period. Overall, the results imply that loneliness can be a rising concern in emerging adulthood. Although the frequently used term "loneliness epidemic" seems exaggerated, emerging adults should therefore not be overlooked when designing interventions against loneliness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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新兴成年人的孤独感是否会随着时间的推移而增加？预先注册的跨时间荟萃分析和系统评价。

从全球媒体的大量报道来看，孤独感似乎是一个日益紧迫的社会问题。自 20 世纪 70 年代末以来，由于社会关系的碎片化加剧、流动机会的增加以及技术创新带来的沟通方式的变化等社会发展，新兴成年人的生活经历发生了巨大变化。这些社会发展可能与新兴成年人的孤独感增加同时发生。在目前预先注册的跨时间荟萃分析中，我们研究了过去 43 年中新兴成年人的孤独水平是否发生了变化。我们的分析基于 345 项研究的 449 项均值，涉及 437 个独立样本，涉及 124,855 名在 1976 年至 2019 年间完成加州大学洛杉矶分校 (UCLA) 孤独量表的新兴成年人。日历年（β = .224，95% CI [.138，.309]）。这一增长相当于 43 年研究期间加州大学洛杉矶分校孤独量表的 0.56 个标准差。总体而言，研究结果表明，孤独感可能成为成年初期日益令人担忧的问题。尽管经常使用的术语“孤独流行病”似乎有些夸张，但因此在设计应对孤独的干预措施时不应忽视新兴成年人。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。