When stay-at-home orders went into effect, one of the biggest concerns was loneliness.
New research says COVID-19 loneliness wasn’t as bad as predicted.
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Especially for those who are already at particularly high risk for loneliness like the elderly andpeople who live alone.
But new research shows that feelings of loneliness didnt actually spike at all.
Dr. Luchetti and her team surveyed 1,545 adults ages 18 to 98 about loneliness three times during 2020.
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The first time was in late-January/early-February and the survey was unrelated to COVID-19.
Reports of loneliness leveled off by the third survey.
All of theZoom workouts,virtual first dates, anddigital game nightsreally paid off.
Humans are social creatures and social interaction is critical to our health and well-being.
The measures taken to reduce the impact of the pandemic physically cut people off from one another.
We had expected that one effect of these measures would be substantial increases in loneliness, says Dr. Luchetti.
This could have a large impact on the findings.
If they stayed in the study, maybe we would have seen an increase in loneliness after all.
Both studies used variations of the UCLA Loneliness Scale.
However, though the studies found different results Dr. Rosenberg says Dr. Luchettis research provides a hopeful picture.
Dr. Luchetti says its important for researchers to keep monitoring COVID-19 loneliness.
Yet, we need to remain vigilant and continue to monitor loneliness as the social distancing measures continue.
It is possible that resilience may run out at some point.
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