Types of Social Connectedness and Loneliness: the Joint Moderating Effects of Age and Gender

Drawing on Maslow’s Theory, this study aims to examine how the interaction between age and gender moderates the associations between types of social connectedness (i.e., parents, siblings, friends, and teachers) and loneliness. The results of multigroup analyses using a sample of 618 school-going adolescents showed that the effect of social connectedness on loneliness varies across different subgroups of age and gender. Specifically, parent connectedness predicts lower loneliness for older males. For older females, parent connectedness showed the same pattern of reduced loneliness. Furthermore, younger males and younger females were getting less lonely with having sibling connectedness. On the other hand, the findings have failed to find significant relationship between friend and teacher connectedness and loneliness across four subgroups. Overall, the results provide further evidence of the protective effect of family connectedness on loneliness, and for informing under what conditions the effect is strengthened or weakened.