Hikikomori: Is This Dark Japanese Phenomenon Going Global?

The word hikikomori stems from Japanese terms "to withdraw and retreat” and “to stay inside". It’s defined by people subjecting themselves to extreme social withdrawal for at least 6 months, typically confining themselves to just a single room in their parents’ home or a lonely apartment for years upon years.

Agoraphobic anxiety and remaining house-bound are the defining characteristics, although hikikomori is linked to certain habits and characteristics. Quite often, their sleep schedule gets flipped, with people sleeping through the day and becoming more active at night. Their waking hours are typically spent glued to a screen, whether it's gaming, browsing the web, flicking through a smartphone, or watching TV. In many cases, basic chores like personal hygiene or housekeeping are sidelined. Few things seem to matter, except for maintaining this slow state of near-nothingness. 

The phenomenon was first brought to public attention in the 1990s by Tamaki Saitō, a Japanese psychologist who projected it as an “adolescence without end,” a radical attempt to reject the crushing responsibilities of adulthood and the relentless demands of the modern world by retreating from them entirely.

At the time, Saitō estimated that roughly one million Japanese people were living this way. While he initially associated it with young men, recent data suggests it is now affecting a growing number of women and older generations as well. The scale of the problem appears to be increasing, too. A 2023 survey by the Japanese government found that approximately 1.46 million people, or 2 percent of the country’s population, could be living as hikikomori.

The causes are complex and fiddly, like any psychosocial phenomenon. While mental health conditions and psychiatric conditions are frequently present, hikikomori is not a medical diagnosis, nor is it always linked to one. Instead, it's better understood as the result of deeply personal vulnerabilities colliding with the intense pressures of Japanese society: its highly competitive education system, all-consuming workplaces, high family expectations, and the weight of social conformity. 

However, a growing body of evidence suggests that hikikomori may not be a uniquely Japanese experience. As the world becomes increasingly uncertain and insular, it may be a growing phenomenon too. 

In a 2011 study, researchers surveyed psychiatrists across Australia, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States, asking whether they had encountered patients displaying symptoms consistent with hikikomori. The findings showed that extremely similar patterns of withdrawal were lurking in every country examined, with particularly high concentrations in urban areas. And crucially, the differences between countries were not statistically significant. A more recent analysis published in 2025 reached similar findings, concluding that hikikomori is a common problem across East Asia and the “Western” world.

Things aren't immediately set to improve, either. There's some evidence that the problem became crystallised after the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdowns, and the cultural upheaval of that strange era. One study tracked 7,500 teenagers in Italy to see how their social behaviour changed between 2019 and 2022, before and after the COVID lockdowns. While many adolescents remained socially active and friendship-focused, a growing number had become what the researchers called "Lone Wolves." 

Most strikingly, the number of Italian teenagers who never see their friends at all had doubled in the post-pandemic years. The researchers stressed the "chronic nature" of the problem, indicating it was not just a phase of a temperamental teen, but a way of life that had an uncomfortable resemblance to hikikomori.

But what can be done? In a world of remote work, on-demand at-home entertainment, and the rising cost of simply going out, the conditions that breed withdrawal and detachment are only becoming more ordinary. Meanwhile, silver bullet solutions are unlikely to emerge without deep, long-term research. 

Hikikomori may have been born in Japan, but perhaps they were just ahead of the curve.