During the great depression, isolation and loneliness were the 2 main key points that affected people during the time; Living on streets, fighting for survival, begging for money and a place to live are just a few examples. So here is the question I want to cover in this essay. ln what ways did teens experience loneliness during the great depression? In the following paragraphs I will cover isolation, trustworthiness and abandonment as the main problems teens faced during this time period. First off let me discuss the problem of isolation as it relates to loneliness.

Teens being Isolated from other teens by their location had a huge impact on their social life. The lack of peers to learn from and talk to forced them to internalize the way they felt. Many teens feel incapable of discussing problems with adults do to fear of embarrassment or being told that they were being irrational. The inability for the teens during this time to communicate and express how they felt impacted not only their physical well being but also their mental state of mind. Even if they did have other teens to talk to their was always the issue of trustworthiness during the great depression.

Trustworthiness was another cause of loneliness. The reason being is people weren’t exactly .friendly back then. People fought to live, stole food from other people suffering from the depression, and trusted no one. Trust was a hard thing to give to a friend because people always stole stuff from others. Therefore, teens kept to themselves. They also isolated themselves from others because they hadn’t developed the skills to know who they could trust and rely upon. Some were lucky enough to know each other before the Depression hit and started gangs or groups with each other in order to survive. This didn’t help those teens that were abandoned at the beginning of the depression.

The last topic is the Abandonment of parents leading into loneliness. During the Depression, some teens got abandoned by their parents and left to face this disaster alone. Parents simply didn’t want the extra package around or didn’t want to spend the money to support their child. So they dropped them somewhere or left without ever coming back in hopes that they will get through it. This abandonment caused many of the teens to trust no one and therefore they were unable to interact with their peers.

In the previous paragraphs, I have discussed the contributing factors of isolation, loneliness, and abandonment that helped contribute to the loneliness of these teenagers. As you can tell there weren’t just 1 factor there were many factors that made them feel the loneliness that they felt. Unfortunately those that survived the depression, ended up alone and withdrawn within themselves even after the great depression was over.