00:00 We do know that young people 18 to 24 and those age 45 to 54 are actually reporting
00:07 the highest levels of loneliness, which is not really what we would expect.
00:10 But again, this is a clear demonstration of how loneliness is very different from being
00:14 alone.
00:15 But, you know, the reasons of why they might be lonely could be quite different.
00:20 Loneliness is a subjective feeling where you feel like your relationships do not meet your
00:24 current social needs.
00:26 So you might be around people, you might actually have lots of interaction, but you still feel
00:30 perhaps that you're not, you're actually not understood.
00:35 Perhaps you're actually feeling that you have no one to turn to or to talk to.
00:39 So it's a really distressing feeling that we're talking about here.
00:42 So for this particular report, what we did find was that young people actually reported
00:47 a higher level of social media addiction.
00:49 Now this is very different from frequency.
00:52 So it's not about amount they use, but actually really how they use it.
00:56 We don't actually know if that's actually the definite cause, but it's what we call
00:59 association.
01:01 So that's one of the many causes for young people.
01:05 So we do have this year Australia's inaugural Loneliness Awareness Week.
01:08 It's really important that people actually find out what loneliness is and what it's
01:13 not, and how to get help and how to actually speak about it.
01:16 And if you actually do know that someone who is lonely and you are trying to help them,
01:20 there's some resources on our website that they can actually go to to try to actually
01:25 talk to and reconnect with people who might need the help.
01:28 And remembering that it's people who feel lonely are incredibly feeling ashamed about
01:34 it and they're actually trying to conceal it.
01:36 So it's really important for us to learn those steps to actually make people feel safe and
01:39 comfortable to talk about their loneliness.
01:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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