Hundreds of Scottish children a year contact Childline because they are lonely a charity has revealed.
The NSPCC - which runs the service - said he true figure was likely to be higher and warned that girls are five times more likely to report suffering from loneliness as boys.
Across the UK, Childline counselled 4063 young people in 2016/17 for feelings of loneliness and isolation.
The NSPCC found 73 per cent of counselling sessions about loneliness were with girls.
Matt Forde, national head for NSPCC Scotland, said online and offline concerns were cited by young people.
“There is no single reason why so many young people are suffering from loneliness and as result there is no simple fix to the problem. What is clear is that the world is becoming an increasingly complex place to grow up in with children and teenagers’ facing daily pressures to achieve what society defines as a successful life – grades, relationships, physical appearance." he said.
"It is therefore vital that children and teenagers have people around them, in particular parents, who they can really open up to about how they are feeling.”
Concerns about loneliness among younger people were highlighted by a Herald poll last month. BMG research found that while around one in four over 65s say they feel lonely from time to time or more often, 59 per cent of 16-34s say they do.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here