Gender differences in loneliness in children and adolescents: A meta-analysis.

Loneliness is defined as the unpleasant feeling that occurs when people perceive their network of social relationships to be deficient in a quantitative or qualitative way (Perlman & Peplau, 1981). People differ in the frequency, duration, and intensity of loneliness they experience, and a frequently investigated factor to explain this variation is gender. Several researchers have hypothesized that gender differences in loneliness will emerge only from adolescence onwards. To test this hypothesis, we conducted multilevel meta-analyses on gender differences in loneliness across childhood and adolescence. During childhood, few gender differences in loneliness are expected, but when children enter adolescence, it is thought that girls are more at risk for loneliness than boys. This hypothesis is based on sexual selection evolutionary theory (Martel, 2013), which suggests that adolescence, and in particular puberty, is a critical period for women, because they become more sensitive to interpersonal aspects of the social environment. In addition, the theory states that women have more negative emotionality and more effortful control than men, with both characteristics being linked to the development of internalizing problems, such as loneliness. A systematic literature search was conducted, resulting in 272 reports that examined gender differences in loneliness in children and adolescents. These reports included 293 different samples, with 108 samples including children (i.e., samples with a mean age of 12 years or younger) and 185 samples including adolescents (i.e., samples with a mean age between 12 and 21 years). A multi-level meta-analytic approach (Van den Noortgate & Onghena, 2003) was used to account for statistical dependency (i.e., multiple effect sizes within one study) and for the fact that different measures of loneliness were included. Preliminary analyses based on 323 effect sizes, showed no gender differences in loneliness across childhood and adolescence (d = 0.009, 95% CI = [-0.044; 0.061]). In addition, moderator analyses suggested that effect sizes did not differ between children and adolescents (F(1, 321) = 0.285, p = 0.594). Other moderators will also be examined to explain the variation in effect sizes, such as the loneliness measure used, the country the study was conducted in, and the clinical, ethnic, and socioeconomic status of the participants. The present results show no gender differences in loneliness across childhood and adolescence, which is in contrast with the hypothesis based on sexual selection evolutionary theory. However, the findings are in line with the gender similarities hypothesis (Hyde, 2005). Moreover, the results are in line with previous reviews showing that even though boys and girls tend to focus on different types of relationships and get different provisions from these relationships, they are still equally social, take comparable care about how they relate to others, and do not differ on friendship satisfaction (Baumeister & Sommer, 1997; Gardner & Gabriel, 2004; Rose & Rudolph, 2006).status: accepte