Current Study

In the current study, we examined longitudinal associations between loneliness and smoking behaviour. We adopted a multi-dataset approach, exploring these longitudinal associations in multiple samples of adolescents and young adults. This is a unique approach, which on the one hand allows us to compare findings across different samples of the same developmental stage, providing a more robust answer, which is highly valuable given the mixed results in the literature. On the other hand, it allows us to compare different developmental groups and investigate development-specific factors that contribute to smoking. This is highly valuable, as these can be used to tailor prevention and intervention services to the needs of specific developmental groups.

The aim of this study was twofold. First, using three adolescent samples (12–18 years), we examined whether adolescent loneliness is longitudinally associated with smoking initiation. We chose to focus on smoking initiation in this developmental period since this is the stage at which smoking behaviour is usually initiated. We hypothesized that adolescents who feel lonely will be more likely to start smoking than adolescents who feel less lonely. Second, in two university student samples (18–30 years), we investigated if loneliness predicted smoking status (i.e. non-smoker, occasional smoker, regular smoker) at 6 and 18 months after baseline. We chose to examine smoking status—and not initiation—since we expect that by this age, fewer novice smokers are to be expected and established smoking status is more relevant among this older age group. We expected that participants who feel lonely at baseline would be more likely to have an established status at the next time point(s) compared to participants who feel less lonely at baseline.