One in ten Dutch feel very lonely; Still higher than pre-pandemic

Nearly 11 percent of the Dutch population aged 15 or older felt very lonely in 2023. That is the same percentage as a year earlier and still higher than in pre-pandemic 2019, when around 9 percent of Netherlands residents were very lonely. Loneliness is most common among people born outside the Netherlands, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported.

The very lonely people described experiencing emotional loneliness, which includes feeling emptiness around them, missing people, and feeling often let down. They also reported social loneliness, which includes feeling that they don’t have people around them to whom they feel connected and who they can trust to catch them when they fall.

Last year, 29 percent of the Dutch population aged 15 or older felt somewhat lonely, and 61 percent didn’t experience loneliness. These percentages are also comparable to 2022. In 2019, the last full year before the coronavirus pandemic, 66 percent of Dutch did not feel lonely.

Emotional loneliness, the lack of a close bond, is most common among young people aged 15 to 25 at 14 percent. People aged 35 to 45 are most likely to experience social loneliness, the need for more social contact, at 18 percent.

People born outside the Netherlands are most likely to struggle with loneliness. Almost 20 percent of this population group indicated that they felt very lonely, compared to 9 percent of people who were born in the Netherlands. Loneliness is only slightly higher among people born in the Netherlands but whose parents weren’t at around 10 percent.

“Although people born outside the Netherlands have social contact with family, friends, or neighbors just as often or more often, they still feel very lonely more often than those born in the Netherlands,” CBS said. “It is mainly social loneliness that they experience more often than people born in the Netherlands.”

Loneliness doesn’t automatically mean that someone is dissatisfied with life, but adults who are very lonely are less likely to be satisfied with their lives (50 percent) than people who are not or only somewhat lonely (88 percent).