Loneliness Not the Same as Being Alone
Research By: Ryan Adams, PhD
Post Date: October 9, 2025 | Publish Date: Aug. 20, 2025
Study suggests that youth with autism prefer quality social interactions over frequent ones
Many young people with autism report higher degrees and frequency of loneliness than the general population. However, that does not necessarily mean that people with autism want to be stuck in rooms full of other people.
New details about how loneliness affects people with autism emerged in a study published August 20, 2025, in the journal Autism Research. The study was led by corresponding author Ryan Adams, PhD, a member of the Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s. The results were based on survey responses from 241 autistic youth between the ages of 15 and 26 years.
“It is not just the amount of time in social interactions that is critical to understanding loneliness, but whether the individual feels that their social interactions meet their individual needs,” Adams says.
For example, a person with autism attending an event may not be alone but may feel ignored, excluded, or even victimized by others. The study reports that negative experiences from social interactions appear to drive feelings of loneliness more than low frequency of social interactions.
“Higher levels of being ignored were associated with higher levels of loneliness,” Adams says.
Meanwhile, youth with autism were divided about whether they had positive or negative feelings about the time they spend alone.
For those with positive feelings about being alone, the amount of time they spent being alone did not affect whether they reported feeling lonely. However, those with negative feelings about being alone, such as feeling cut off from a friend or preferred activity, were also more likely to report loneliness regardless of how much time was spent being alone.
“Based on the current study, interventions aimed at reducing loneliness should not solely focus on increasing the amount of time autistic youth spend interacting and decreasing the amount of time they spend alone,” Adams says. “It is equally important for interventions to focus on reducing negative interaction patterns among these youth.”
More research is needed to understand day-to-day interactions, but one potential intervention may be to offer programs to teach non-autistic youth how to be inclusive in their interactions with autistic peers in ways that make them feel less ignored.
About the study
This project was supported by the U.S. Department of Defense (W81XWH-20-1-0475), and by the FAR Fund with core support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P50 HD103537) and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (UL1 TR000445).
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| Original title: | Examining Associations Between Social Experiences and Loneliness Among Autistic Youth |
| Published in: | Autism Research |
| Publish date: | Aug. 20, 2025 |
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