Followers are drawn to this new breed of influencers who have no friends, no plans and nowhere to be

Tess Lavanda is standing alone on a Greek island, looking over the Aegean Sea.

“I spent my 22nd birthday alone,” she says in a video liked almost 18,000 times.

“No friends. No boyfriend. Just me.”

Lavanda, a London-based creator with tens of thousands of followers across Instagram and TikTok, is part of a fast-growing genre dubbed “loneliness influencers” who document their solitary lives with no friends, no plans and nowhere to be.

The content is anything but exciting. There are no yachts, designer handbags or champagne towers. Instead, they document nights alone eating pizza in front of the television and decanting a Diet Coke into a wine glass before publishing the clips with captions about being content on your own.

Speaking to The Nightly from Greece, Lavanda said she had no idea “loneliness influencer” content already existed when she uploaded an emotional video about being lonely and homesick after moving to London alone a few months ago.

“I was extremely hesitant to post that first video because social media is such a massive highlight reel,” she said.

“That video wasn’t even planned to go on social media. I was feeling so alone that I had to get my camera out and talk to somebody.”

But the response was immediate.

“I posted it late in the evening and I didn’t even think it was going to reach anyone, but it was so positive,” she said.

“The messages that I’ve received from people are enough to keep me going for the rest of my life, to be honest.”

Lavanda, who grew up in New Zealand before moving to the other side of the world, often admits she has “never had many friends” but “feeling alone is OK”.

“The reason my content is resonating with people is because someone is saying exactly how they’re feeling, and (followers) can see from the (comments) that they aren’t alone,” she told The Nightly.

“Although they may feel lonely, there are thousands and thousands of people engaging and commenting.

“Even if they don’t want to be friends with me, they’re making friends in the comments.”

Lavanda is not alone in being alone online.

Canadian creator Lana Isa inspired the term ‘loneliness influencer’ with her vlogs (video blogs) about living alone, being single and having no friends.

More than 210,000 Instagram users follow the self-described “(caffeinated) loner girl” as she shares highly repetitive but comforting content such as “Friday night alone as a happy and content introvert”.

American creator Devon Noehring, based in Phoenix, descrSibes herself as a “single introvert” who lives alone with her corgi and two cats while Boston creator Lauren Blake Lucia posts for “the girls in the city learning to love being alone”.

Noehring is honest about the shame that drove her to post.

“I started sharing content of me being alone at home because I always felt so much shame in being alone,” she says in one video.

“I felt like everyone saw me as a loser with no friends, and I never saw anyone else on social media just hanging out by themselves, sharing the mundane moments of life.”

Her goal, she says, was to normalise being alone, “making it not just normal, but actually cool”.

British creator Sarah-Jane Hoadley has amassed huge audiences by documenting her tiny bedsit, quiet routines and “friend-free” lifestyle.

Hoadley, whose Drama Free Diaries bio promises content “for the girls who don’t need (or want) the big, flashy social media lifestyle”, is more sardonic.

In one recent video, styled like a BBC nature documentary, a voice over observes “a woman with no kids, no friends and no evidence of a life partner”.

“The research team has been forced to conclude that the subject requires neither rescuing nor a husband,” it says.

“It seems this is not loneliness. It is peace.”

Hoadley this week told The Nightly Australia is her account’s second-largest audience after the UK.

The creators all use hashtags that are part confession, part reassurance, such as #alonenotlonely, #sololife, #livingalone, #introvertdiaries, #solodate, #singlelife, #nightin and #cozyathome.

It is that tension – between validation and romanticisation – that concerns Australia’s leading loneliness researcher Michelle Lim.

Associate Professor Lim, the scientific chair and CEO of Ending Loneliness Together, said she understood why people wanted to remove the shame from spending time alone.

“I really appreciate people going through life stages where they might be physically alone,” she said.

“I really appreciate that embrace of, ‘We can do things by ourselves and we shouldn’t be stigmatised just because we’re having dinner by ourselves or going to movies by ourselves.’ I agree.

“My slight hesitation is that it doesn’t move into glorification.

“We know loneliness and social isolation are states that are not good for our health, and wellbeing generally, in any way.”

Associate Professor Lim, a clinical psychologist, said that does not mean everyone needs a crowded calendar.

“Is the goal really to always be with other people? For some people, maybe not, and that’s OK,” she said.

“There are people who prefer a more solitary life and that’s completely OK.”

The problem, she said, begins when chosen solitude becomes unwanted loneliness or long-term withdrawal.

“Humans are not really designed to be solitary,” she said.

“By nature, we are innately social, and that’s why loneliness and social isolation comes at a health cost.”

The principal research fellow from Sydney University uses the term “social atrophy” to describe what can happen when people become so used to being alone that ordinary interactions begin to feel stressful.

“Your brain is a social muscle,” she said.

“If you don’t practise being with people, then your brain actually processes social interactions as pain, as hyper-vigilance, and that’s where it gets tricky.”

In Australia, loneliness is not a niche issue. The Federal Government’s State of the Nation 2023 report found almost one in three people living in Australia reported loneliness at any given time.

“One in four Australians, or people living in Australia, report persistent loneliness. That is the issue,” Professor Lim said.

“Loneliness itself isn’t a pathological signal. It’s like feeling hungry and feeling thirsty. It’s meant to prompt us to do something.”

Young people aged 18 to 25 are particularly at risk of persistent loneliness, she said.

Still, the associate professor believes the videos may have value if they help people feel less ashamed.

“I like the idea that some people share because that can build some solidarity and de-stigmatise it,” she said.

“But again, it’s not to say that is an end state, to not need anybody, because that really just contradicts everything that we are as human beings.”

Crystal Abidin, a professor of internet studies at Perth’s Curtin University, said “hot takes” would wrongly blame the trend solely on COVID.

“I happened to have looked into this genre specifically from as early as 2017,” she said.

The digital anthropologist and ethnographer said solo-living content was already popular among bloggers in Japan, Korea and China, where dense cities increasingly catered for people living alone.

The pandemic did not invent the trend, but it helped make it mainstream in the West.

Professor Abidin said the appeal of these creators was not necessarily aspiration in the traditional sense.

“Back in the day, we used to give our attention to aspiration. We want to be like these people,” she said.

Then came the “antagonistic internet”, driven by scandal and conflict, followed by the “atmospheric internet” of pandemic-era day-in-the-life content.

Now, she says, we are in the “amicable internet”, where audiences gather around like-minded creators and micro-communities.

“So many of these influencers are fostering very esoteric niche hobbies and interests in their living-alone situations that only appeal to people in that very specific micro-demographic,” she said.

What looks mundane – unpacking groceries, tidying an apartment, eating dinner alone – can create a powerful sense of “co-presence”.

“In this very short moment in time, it feels like you’re there together, just vicariously experiencing what they’re doing,” Professor Abidin said.

But she also urged caution, saying not all loneliness influencers are as solitary as they seem.

“In general, we should be sceptical of everything all influencers say,” she said.

“What we see is what they want to show us.”

The danger, she said, comes when diary-style content edges into advice about mental health or coping.

“There is a very thin line between vlogging and sharing their diary lifestyles, and then promoting it as a way to cope with stress or mental health struggles,” she said.

But Professor Abidin also pushed back against “moral panic” that society is degenerating into people who no longer want to talk to each other.

“This is just one aspect or one facet of life,” she said.

“It’s OK to want to design and protect your own space.”

Perhaps that is why the videos resonate beyond the obviously lonely.

Remote work, housing pressures, moving cities, relationship breakdowns, single-person households and exhausted parents craving one quiet hour may all help explain the appeal.

In the comments beneath Hoadley’s posts, married women admit they fantasise about her quiet life.

“Can I tell you that I have been married to a lovely man for nearly 26 years and have two young adult children, who I also love dearly…but I find myself fantasising about having your life,” wrote Tracey.

“I’ve even said it to my husband - just having my own peace of mind, knowing everything is as I choose it to be, with no one making a mess they never clear up.”

Lavanda’s solitary birthday video attracted hundreds of comments.

“I spent my 40th and 50th on my own through choice, and loved it! Hope you can be happy in your own company x” wrote Martyn.

Lavanda rejects the idea she is romanticising loneliness.

“Loneliness is such an ugly topic,” she said. “I think even just talking about it isn’t romanticising it because you’re explaining the struggle of it.

“Loneliness doesn’t have to be a dead end. It’s something that you can move through and work through.

“I would tell (anyone feeling alone) that although they may be sitting alone in their room, they’re not alone in this world.”