No amount of planning can ever prepare you for living as a youth in the Nigerian climate. If you’re a student, the rough jungle-like hostel lifestyle, coupled with terrible grading systems used in our schools is capable of wearing down anybody. Exorbitant prices too are a frustrating reality for undergraduates. For those who are outside the large four walls of a lecture theatre, the problems are even worse. Jobs are scarce, almost non-existent. The ones who have chosen the entrepreneurial route, have to battle the huge stumbling block that our country’s poor economic situation poses for them. Honestly, you could describe the country as a furnace that kills dreams.
Unfortunately, our young people are being baptized into this “fire” at a pivotal period of their lives: their youth. So much is already happening within the individual at this period. People are battling inner debates about God, themselves, finding out who they are, and trying to decide the kind of people they want to be.
Doing all that growing up in an environment as messy as our current Nigerian society would surely take its toll on any youth.
It's therefore not so surprising that at this period, many youths fall into a dark place called loneliness. Loneliness has a lot of possible meanings, but put simply, it is the sadness that comes with realizing that one has no friends or company.
In defining loneliness, it is very important to keep in mind that it is an emotion, a feeling, and is not to be confused with solitude, the state of being alone. It is a cancer that attacks man from within, because anything that fills the mind, controls the body.
Loneliness could be classed into two subgroups: social and emotional loneliness. Emotional loneliness is the more painful form of loneliness, as one could have a lot of friends and still feel like they have nobody to actually be themselves with. While social loneliness arises from a lack of a social network {colleagues, course mates and friends}, emotional loneliness happens when an individual does not have intimate relationships in their life. These intimate relationships do not necessarily have to be romantic ones, but rather someone such as a best friend with whom they can be their most vulnerable selves.
What Causes Loneliness in Youths?
Mankind is a race of diversity. Every single one of us is so peculiarly different from the other, that it is sometimes easy to forget that we’re all under the same big race of humanity. We have different ways of coping with life’s struggles. For some people, they prefer to be up and about whenever they’re going through things, as the idea of staying active helps them to cope with whatever might be troubling their minds
Other times, people just want to be left alone. The danger with this feeling, is that it can become too comfortable for the individual. Young people suffer a tough time, and, for fear of bleeding on people who have not cut them, conclude that the best way to deal with it is by shutting out the rest of the world. The issue with that is, they tend not to notice when they’ve solved that problem, because life has its way of throwing two new problems at us before we’ve even finished solving one. And so the problems pile up on each other, but the individual is becoming weaker and weaker, because he or she has less and less people around who can speak life into their tired spirit.
Religion too, isn't always an effective savior. This is because many times in church or the mosque, we feel the need to put up a front, a façade of ourselves that is prim and proper and pious enough to be accepted by other members of the fold. This prevents us from being our true selves, and being truly known by fellow worshippers. Eventually, people are just forced further and further into their shells, and can easily slip into loneliness. It doesn't help that many churches and fellowships are very big. Their leadership too, are like the proverbial giraffe and have their noses too far from the ground to actually see and care about how their members are faring.
What are the Results of our Youths’ Loneliness?
You could brush aside this problem as one of the growing pains that are part of transitioning from teenage hood into adulthood. But the issue becomes impossible to overlook when you take into consideration all of the other evils that accompany it.
The alarming level of loneliness among our youths will probably cause many of them to grow to become maladjusted adults who have problems with showing any kind of emotional vulnerability to anybody, be it their spouses, children or outsiders. If that is the case, we have a bleak picture painted for the future of Nigerian society. One thing about hiding, is that when you hide, or run from something, you hide yourself in another something. And the things our youths are hiding themselves in aren't good for them at all.
Drugs and alcohol offer an easy, momentary escape from life’s worries, but when the high comes down, users are left with a low that feels even worse than what they had before using those substances. Since the whole point of substance abuse is to “feel good”, users simply repeat the dosage over and over again. And this is how substance abuse is taking control of our youths’ lives, driving them madly to nowhere.
And when I say nowhere, I mean nowhere good at all. Drugs are expensive, and eventually it becomes too difficult for these youths to keep buying these drugs out of their own pockets, so many times, they are forced to resort to other vices like stealing, internet fraud and other ugly things. It’s also important to note that loneliness could be a reason for the sudden spike in hyper materialism among our young people. Many youths are convinced that having a lot of money would hide the emptiness inside, or attract people to them. But that, obviously, isn't how things work. What happens next? Frustration and desperation sets in, and that is why suicide rates among our youths are skyrocketing, while another set are killing their friends all in the name of money rituals.
How can we Help Youths Dealing with Loneliness?
Community is the answer to youth loneliness, or any type of loneliness, in fact. Think about it, the best way to stop someone from feeling isolated is by putting them around other people that will be around them to offer them good companionship.
It is so easy to lose oneself in the motions of life as a young adult, and by doing so, end up feeling lonely. But with the right support groups and systems like the NBYF in place, this problem can be minimized. The support groups would have to be small cells, so that they can pay close attention to their members. And these groups would be formed around the common interests of youths. Extracurricular like sports, music, and arts are sure to attract and retain youths in a group and give them a sense of belonging, Book clubs, art groups, sports teams as well as music bands; these are all things that are often neglected, but are a strong inroad into our youths’ lives.
This is so that even if the youths tire of human interaction, their love for their hobbies would still bring them back to the cell meetings.
We also need to remember that loneliness in a feeling, something in the mind. To correct this mental anomaly, we need to work on the mind too. So this is where counselling and therapy comes into play. The youths need to have trained individuals walk them through the dark corridors of this trying period, so that they do not fall into loneliness, feeling that they have to solve everything on their own. Trained counsellors will offer our youth’s clinically proven solutions to their problems as well as the valuable advice that they need.
This is our dream at NBYF. Our primary aim is to take care of Nigerian youths as best we can, and that means that we’re dedicated towards battling loneliness among our youths. But to replicate this idea of targeted cells and communities all over the country, we need your help. With your donation, you can help us bring counselling and a valuable community to these struggling young adults in Nigeria. Donate today and become part of the changemakers. Join NBYF to eradicate youth loneliness. The youths count on you!
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