September 16, 2022 – You brought your computer home from work “for 2 weeks” in March 2020 and stayed home for 2 years. Schools have gone virtual. Club meetings have been canceled. Gyms closed.
Friends and family have become forbidden. Remember to avoid others on the street?
The situation has improved since the epidemic, but we have remained relatively isolated for much longer than expected. And that’s kind of sad – and bad for us. It turns out that avoiding a virus can be detrimental to your health, because unity and connection are the foundations of our well-being.
“As humans, we are evolutionarily designed to crave contact with other humans,” says Richard B. Slatcher, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. “It’s been called the ‘need to belong’ and it’s up there as a basic need with food and water.”
Logic: Early humans who clustered with others were more likely to find food, protect themselves, and survive to pass on their genes, he says.
When we were suddenly plunged into insulation in 2020, social ties were already fraying. The book bowling alone came out 2 decades earlier. Author Robert D. Putnam lamented the decline of “social capital,” the value we derive from relationships and our sense of community support. Atlantic published a story titled “Why You Don’t See Your Friends Anymore” months before any of us hear about COVID-19.
The pandemic has accelerated these feelings of isolation. Even after being vaccinated and boosted, many of us feel like we are not connecting as we would like. And for some, politics has driven that divide.
Should we care? Yes, say the experts. Social relationships are strongly linked to health and longevity. A famous study published in 2010 in OLP Medicine concluded that social connections were as important for health as not smoking and more impactful than exercise.
This review, which relied on data from 148 studies, found that people with stronger social connections were 50% more likely to survive during the 7.5-year follow-up (i.e. not die from causes such as cancer or heart disease), compared to those with weaker ties.
The evidence keeps coming. The American Heart Association issued a statement this August saying that social isolation and loneliness are associated with a 30% increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
“Given the prevalence of social disconnection in the United States, the public health impact is quite significant,” said Crystal Wiley Cené, MD, chair of the group that authored the statement. Press release.
The organization said the data confirms what we suspected: isolation and loneliness have increased during the pandemic, particularly among adults aged 18 to 25, older people, women and people on low incomes.
Your shrinking circle
In the first year of pandemicthere was a slight increase in loneliness and psychological distress and a slight decrease in life satisfaction, according to a 2022 study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
For about 1 in 4 people, social circles have shrunk, says study author Emily Long, PhD, “even after lockdown restrictions eased.”
When your circle shrinks, you tend to keep your loved ones – the people who are probably most like you. You lose the diversity of opinions and viewpoints you might have when chatting with someone in your pickleball league, for example, or even a stranger.
“Our exposure to diverse people, lifestyles, and opinions has gone down significantly,” Long says. Many of us have seen ties with others weaken or break altogether due to disagreements over COVID restrictions and vaccinations.
This has happened with acquaintances, once close friends or family members when their views on hot topics were front and center – topics we might have avoided in the past to maintain the peace.
Some of those relationships might not be rebuilt, Long says, although it’s too early to tell.
How to make better connections online
Many of us jumped online for our social interaction. Did Zoom, Instagram and Facebook help us connect?
Of course, in a way.
“It can be harder sometimes, but people can form meaningful relationships without being physically close,” says John CaughlinPhD, head of the communication department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which studies “computer-mediated communication”.
It all depends on how you use it. Late night doom scrolling is not relationship building. But you can forge new or stronger connections through social media if you “treat each other like people,” he says.
Here’s a solution: don’t hit a lazy “like” on a post, but instead leave a thoughtful comment that adds value to the conversation. Perhaps add your experience or offer words of support. Give a restaurant recommendation if they are traveling.
But remember, social media has become a minefield during the pandemic, Caughlin says. People expressed their views on staying home, vaccinations and masks. You quickly learned who shared your views and rethought your relationship with others.
It is tempting to consider social networks as a plague. But that may just be our inherent panic button reaction to new technology, Caughlin says. Surprisingly, global research — and there has been plenty — has shown that social media has little impact on well-being, he says.
A recent Stanford University meta-analysis over 226 studies from 2006 to 2018 looked for a link between social media use and well-being. What they found: zero. Some studies show a link between social media and anxiety and depression, it’s true, but that may be because those who have the Depression or anxious are more likely to spend more time on social media for distraction.
Make someone happy, including you
Sound familiar? You tend to follow your friends as a voyeur on social media rather than, say, calling, texting, or meeting face-to-face. If this sounds like you, you’re not alone.
But if you reverse course and start reaching out again, chances are both you and the other person will benefit. New research from American Psychological Association over nearly 6,000 people have found that when someone reaches out to us – even if it’s with a quick text – we deeply appreciate them. The study wasn’t just about the pandemic, but the researchers say the findings could help people rebuild relationships, especially if they’re not sure about trying.
At the same time, Slatcher, the professor from Georgia, notes that more screen time “isn’t the solution” to loneliness or separation.
“All of the work has shown that social media use is not associated with people being happier or less depressed,” he says.
According to Slatcher, the two key elements of building and maintaining relationships are:
- Self-disclosurewhich means sharing something about yourself or being vulnerable by making personal information known to others.
- Reactivitywhich simply means reacting to what someone says, asking follow-up questions, and maybe also kindly sharing something about yourself, without taking over the conversation.
These happen in person all the time. On social media, not so much.
“Both men and women feel happiest when they feel emotionally close to another person, and that’s harder to do online,” Slatcher says.
It turns out that the strongest connections – the ones that are best for your well-being – happen when you hang up the phone.
A surprising bright spot in the pandemic connection
We felt more divided than ever during the pandemic, said Research bench. By some measures, Americans have the lowest levels of social trust since World War II, says Frederick J. Riley, executive director of Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute. If neighbors within a community do not trust each other, they cannot trust society as a whole.
But it’s not all bad news.
Researchers have seen the bonds within communities grow stronger during the pandemic, Riley says. These are the people who run errands for elderly neighbors, donate supplies and clothing, organize family get-togethers, build community gardens, and more.
The “we’re all in this together” mindset emerged early in the pandemic, Long and his colleagues found. A meta-analysis in 2022 in Psychological bulletin found that there has been more cooperation between foreigners. This may be due to greater urbanization or living alone – the distance from our close-knit team forces some to cooperate with others when they otherwise would not.
This too is healthy: A sense of belonging to your community, or “neighborhood cohesion”, as study 2020 has been associated with a lower risk of stroke, heart attack and premature death, according to Canadian researchers. It also helps with Mental Health.
You can take advantage of this, for example, by volunteering at your child’s school, attending religious services, joining a aptitude group or go to festivals in your city. These provide a sense of identity, increased self-esteem and can reduce stress and make you feel less alone, according to the study authors. It also gives the impression that we can make meaningful changes in our cities.
Surely we’re all arguing these days – gun control, Abortion, Politics. Riley says deeper issues, such as a sense of community safety and creating a better place for children to grow up, help us transcend these burning issues.
Sharing goals brings people together, he says, and it’s fueled by that innate need for connection and unity.
“I’m really optimistic about what the future holds,” he says. “We’ve been to this place [of social distrust] before, and it’s the people in the local communities who show that anyone can rise up and make the place they live better.