A new report published by Statistics New Zealand reveals that people under 30 years of age were more likely to feel lonely compared to those above 30 years as loneliness decreases with age.

According to the Loneliness in New Zealand report, which made use of data from the New Zealand General Social Survey in which over 8,500 people over 15 years of age took part, around 18 percent of New Zealanders under 30 years of age admitted to being feeling lonely in the past four weeks compared to 16 percent of those from 30-64 years age group while it dropped to 11 percent among those over 65 years of age.

The spokesman for the General Social Survey, Philip Walker, said that it was impossible to know whether the feeling of loneliness among the young was a new trend as the phenomenon was relatively new. "It could be that people's expectations of connectedness has gone up, so we expect increased levels of connection", he said.