Lonely While Studying? Why It Happens and What Helps

Feeling lonely while studying is common: in the American College Health Association's spring 2025 survey, close to half of US college students screened positive for loneliness. It grows from a gap between the contact you want and the contact you have, and online classes, a move and long hours alone widen it. Small, repeated contact with the same people narrows it.

How common is loneliness among students?

The ACHA survey asks three questions: how often you feel you lack companionship, feel left out and feel isolated from others. "Hardly ever" scores 1 point, "some of the time" 2 and "often" 3. A total of 6 or more out of 9 counts as lonely, as Ohio State's 2025 student loneliness report explains, so "some of the time" on all three is enough.

The share has fallen every spring since 2021 and is still close to half. In 2025 it was highest among trans and gender-nonconforming students, at 61.4%. Two limits: the 97 schools in the 2025 sample chose to take part, and 10% of the students invited answered.

Other measures put it lower. In the World Health Organization's 2025 figures, 17 to 21% of people aged 13 to 29 reported feeling lonely, with teenagers highest. In May 2023, the US Surgeon General's advisory on loneliness and isolation named it an epidemic.

Lonely isn't the same as alone

The WHO defines loneliness as "the painful feeling that arises from a gap between desired and actual social connections", and social isolation as the objective lack of them. You can spend a revision week alone and feel fine, or sit in a full lecture hall and feel lonely.

Psychologists Alice Eccles and Pamela Qualter describe the feeling as adaptive: it hurts so that you reconnect. It turns harmful when it's intense and prolonged.

Why you feel lonely while studying

Online classes remove the in-between moments

A lecture on a screen has no walk out of the room, no queue for coffee, no one asking what you got for question 3. Norway's national student survey, SHoT, shows what that costs. In 2021, when most teaching was online, 47.1% of female students often lacked companionship, up from 24.1% in 2018; the share fell to 29.6% in 2022 (Hysing and colleagues, 2023).

Among the 62,212 students surveyed in 2021, the more days someone had spent on campus in the previous two weeks, the less lonely they were. In 2022, students with 80 to 100% of lectures online were lonelier than the rest. Of the women studying mostly remotely, 49.8% had no or few friends on campus, against 35.1% of those with under a fifth of lectures online. These were pandemic years, so lockdowns may explain part of the gap.

You moved somewhere new

A new university resets your network. At Ohio State in 2025, 50.0% of first-year students screened as lonely, against 37.6% of second-years (the same report). Those are different students at one university, not the same people followed over time.

Moving countries adds a layer. In 200 interviews with international students in Australia, Erlenawati Sawir and colleagues found that two-thirds had experienced loneliness or isolation.

Study hours come out of a day with less room for friends

In the American Time Use Survey, in-person time with friends among Americans aged 15 to 24 fell by about 62 minutes a day between 2003 and 2019. That was the steepest drop of any age group, and their time alone rose by 31 minutes a day (Kannan and Veazie, 2023, 219,368 respondents). Across all ages, time with friends fell from 60 minutes a day in 2003 to 20 in 2020. A thesis, a bar or board exam, or a dedicated revision block puts more solo hours on top.

Does loneliness affect your grades?

It can. Teenagers who felt lonely were 22% more likely to get lower grades or qualifications, according to the WHO's report.

It also tends to stick within a term. At Ohio State, first-year students who felt lonely at the start of their first semester were more likely to still feel lonely later in it. Those who felt a strong sense of community in the first weeks were less lonely by mid-semester.

When it's more than loneliness

Being lonely while studying usually eases as contact grows. Talk to a campus counselor or a doctor if it doesn't, or if it comes with other signs. The US National Institute of Mental Health lists difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions among the symptoms of depression. Depression is diagnosed when symptoms last most of the day, nearly every day, for at least 2 weeks. The two often go together: the WHO estimates that people who are lonely are twice as likely to become depressed.

If you're thinking about suicide or hurting yourself, reach out now:

• US: call or text 988, or chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. It's free, confidential and open 24/7.
• UK and Ireland: call Samaritans free on 116 123, day or night.
• Anywhere else: your local emergency number.

A study room, ours included, can keep you company for a session. It isn't a treatment for loneliness or depression.

What helps, according to research

See the same people, often

Classmates you barely know count. In a 2014 study by Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn, students felt happier and more like they belonged on days when they talked with more classmates than usual. The study tracked days rather than testing causes. In Jeffrey Hall's study of new friendships, 112 first-year students reported their hours with two new acquaintances three times over nine weeks. More hours together went with growing closer.

In practice: sit in the same seat, go to the same weekly section or group, take your coffee break at the same time, and stay for the talk after class.

Send the first message

After a conversation, people underestimate how much the other person liked them. Erica Boothby and colleagues called this the liking gap and found it in first-year students getting to know their dorm mates, where it lasted for months. The classmate you think found you boring probably didn't. Message one person with something specific: "Want to go through problem set 4 together on Thursday?"

Study where other people are studying

A library table, a weekly group or a live room online gives you company and a routine, even when nobody talks. StudyDuo's Focus Room is open around the clock: a grid of people on camera, microphones off, each with what they're working on written under their name. Study Hour starts everyone together once a day. To meet one person regularly, look for a partner by country, city or interests in Find Partners; a 1:1 session, open to people with a verified photo, has sound. More formats are in our guide to the online study group.

Company while you work is a start, not a friendship. In Hall's other sample, 355 adults who had recently moved, time spent on leisure together predicted closeness, so use the breaks and the end of a session to talk. If you can't settle on working alone or with others, Study Alone or in a Group? compares the research on both.

Match the fix to what you're missing

Sawir's team, building on the sociologist Robert Weiss, describes three kinds of loneliness: personal, social and cultural. Each points to a different first step:

Use what your campus offers

Campus counseling, peer mentoring and skills groups are the structured version of this help, and the evidence for them is real but modest. Eccles and Qualter pooled 25 randomized trials with people aged 25 and under. The average effect on loneliness was g = 0.32, and 0.26 in the better-quality trials: a small to moderate drop. They saw social skills training and psychological approaches as the most promising. The differences between program types weren't significant, though, and few programs were aimed at people who said they felt lonely.

If the long solo stretches are what make you lonely while studying, Can't Study Alone? looks at why working next to other people makes those hours easier.