A Finnish study (Latikka et al., 2022) used data from a longitudinal survey on digital age in Finland to investigate the impact of social media use on loneliness during the pandemic. The data of this sample of people aged 21–77 was collected before the pandemic (in 2017 and 2019) and shortly after the first wave (May–June 2020). The researchers expected to find a buffering effect from social media use on the impact of pandemic on loneliness: social media users were envisioned to be less lonely during the pandemic. In line with this expectation, it was found that people who were strongly involved in homogeneous online social groups (so-called social media identity bubbles) were less lonely than people who were not involved in such groups. This finding was corrected for problematic social media use. Furthermore, the researchers did not see an average increase in loneliness from before the pandemic into the first lockdown.
Pregnant women
While pregnancy may be an emotional upheaval, it may also be associated with more feelings of loneliness during the pandemic, but studies comparing loneliness between pregnant and non-pregnant women are rare. The pandemic may have particularly affected pregnant women because of pregnancy-related uncertainties, limited access to healthcare resources for the partners, and lack of social support.
In a Danish study (Severinsen et al., 2021) during the second half of the first wave (April–July 2020), social isolation and loneliness were assessed by means of an online questionnaire and 647 women aged 20–46 who were 20 weeks pregnant. They were compared to 858 women of the same age from the general population (some of whom could be pregnant as well). Social isolation was measured on a ten-point scale (higher scores indicating more social isolation), whereas loneliness was the sum of three questions (UCLA scale) rated 3–9, where higher scores indicated more loneliness. The level of loneliness was significantly lower among pregnant women than in the general population (mean loneliness score 4.4 vs. 5.0). Also, this was not the result of the higher percentage of people living alone among the general population (96 per cent vs. 72 per cent) nor of the higher prevalence of mental disorders in the general population (9.8 per cent vs. 23.0 per cent).
A study in Sweden (Rydelius et al., 2022) investigated the impact of the pandemic on women seeking abortion. Those who received hospital treatment felt much lonelier and socially isolated than women who were treated at home. It was suggested that those receiving treatment at home still had access to social support from their partner or family, whereas those in hospital were not allowed to bring their partners with them.
Informal caregivers
Social restrictions during the pandemic have upset the informal caregivers’ routines and disrupted the normal support services (
Alzheimer Europe). Day care, group activities, and cultural events were closed, and care home residents were not allowed to receive visitors. Much of the informal care was typically provided by the spouse, other relatives, or close friends. The pandemic may therefore have had particularly serious consequences for informal caregivers.
A qualitative study in Norway among 17 spouses of people with dementia investigated how the pandemic had affected the lives of informal caregivers, 14 women and three men aged 52–82 (Rokstad et al., 2021). They were interviewed by telephone between December 2020 and February 2021, that is, during the second wave. The respondents felt that during the first months of the pandemic they had been left alone to manage the responsibility to care for their demented spouse, while many had a greater need for support services than before the pandemic. Most of the formal care stopped or was significantly reduced. In-person contact with other family members was replaced by contact online, which was confusing for the demented spouses.
Another qualitative study (Kynø et al., 2021) investigated how parents of babies in the neonatal intensive care units were affected during the first wave, when fathers but not mothers were excluded from the hospital and could not have any contact with their children. Nine mothers and four fathers whose baby spent at least 14 days in Oslo University Hospital were interviewed after the baby had been discharged. One of the regulations was that mothers could be with the baby. Emotional loneliness was experienced by both fathers and mothers. While mothers were with their new-born babies, and could catch up with other mothers, they could not share their joys and concerns with the fathers. Parents also feared long-term problems of attachment between the fathers and the child.
Which groups were particularly susceptible to loneliness and social isolation during the COVID-19 measures?
To answer this question, we would ideally need studies that compare all possible subgroups, but again, such studies do not exist. Nevertheless, we were able to derive factors related to increased loneliness from studies that compared a limited number of subgroups, such as men and women, young and old, or people living alone as opposed to those living with a partner. We were able to make comparisons with respect to five demographic factors (gender, age, living alone, education, and unemployment) and with respect to health problems and disabilities.
Gender
Studies have consistently found that COVID-19 and related regulations had a greater impact on women’s loneliness as compared to men (Beridze et al., 2022; Geirdal et al., 2021b; Hansen et al., 2021b; Hoffart et al., 2020; O’Sullivan et al., 2021; Pedersen et al., 2022) and social isolation (Pedersen et al., 2022; Varga et al., 2021). With respect to different types of loneliness, women felt more emotionally lonely than men, while men reported feeling more socially lonely than did women (Bonsaksen et al., 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). One study also showed that people who did not identify with their biological sex experienced higher levels of loneliness than those who did (Hoffart et al., 2020).
Age
Younger adults were lonelier (Bonsaksen et al., 2021b; Geirdal et al., 2021a; Hansen et al., 2021c; Hoffart et al., 2020; Pedersen et al., 2022; Varga et al., 2021) and felt more socially isolated than middle-aged and older adults (Pedersen et al., 2022). More specifically, young and middle-aged adults (aged 18–49) experienced more emotional and overall loneliness (Bonsaksen et al., 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). It should also be noted that the oldest-old experienced a stronger increase in loneliness during the pandemic than the young-old (Hansen et al., 2021b; Lehtisalo et al., 2021).
Living alone
People living alone reported higher loneliness levels (Bonsaksen, et al., 2021a, 2021b, 2021c; Geirdal et al., 2021a; Hansen et al., 2021b, 2021c; Hoffart et al., 2020; Lehtisalo et al., 2021; Mäkiniemi et al., 2021) and had an increased risk of social isolation (O’Sullivan et al., 2021) in comparison with those living with someone or having a partner.
Education
Several studies found that people with lower education experienced higher levels of loneliness than those with higher education (Bonsaksen et al., 2021a, 2021b, 2021c; Geirdal et al., 2021a; Hoffart et al., 2020; Varga et al., 2021). While the link between education and loneliness has been observed before, it is not so clear why the two are connected, but Fernández-Carro and Gumà Lao (2022) have recently suggested that a low level of education presorts people into life course trajectories with an increased number of events that cause loneliness (e.g., poverty, more health problems, higher unemployment, earlier widowhood).
Unemployment
Unemployed people reported feeling lonelier during the pandemic than did people in employment (Bonsaksen et al., 2021a, 2021c; Hoffart et al., 2020). Compared to their employed counterparts, unemployed people scored higher on social, emotional, and overall loneliness (Bonsaksen et al., 2021b; Geirdal et al., 2021a; Ruffolo et al., 2021). One study mentioned that young people may have been overrepresented in the unemployed group, which could explain why the unemployed were lonelier (Ruffolo et al., 2021), but the study was not able to test this. Another explanation might be that the unemployed worry about the future and their income to a greater extent, which is also associated with loneliness (Clothworthy et al., 2021; Joensen et al., 2020).
Health problems or disabilities
It was consistently found that people with a mental illness were lonelier and more socially isolated than those without (any history of) mental illness (Barrett et al., 2022; Hoffart et al., 2020; Pedersen et al., 2022; Varga et al., 2021). People with COVID-19 infection, either themselves or within the immediate family, felt more socially lonely than those without infection (Bonsaksen et al., 2021b). People with COPD (Mousing & Sørensen, 2021) and frail older people (Lehtisalo et al., 2021) – with cognitive impairment and other diseases – often self-isolated out of fear of infection. People with mobility, hearing, cognitive, and any other disabilities, reported more loneliness than people without disabilities (Holm et al., 2021). Disability groups did not differ from people without disabilities in terms of increased social isolation.
What are the (typical) mechanisms through which COVID-19 measures may have contributed to loneliness and social isolation in each group?
The answer to this question is based on what the included studies suggest, but we have also made use of supplementary knowledge from other countries to better understand the Nordic findings. The increase in social isolation of people is a direct consequence of the social distancing regulations imposed to curb the spread of the virus. Hence the majority (if not all) citizens of Nordic countries were socially isolated to a certain extent. Some people self-isolated for fear of becoming infected or because they were afraid they might infect others, or because others avoided contact not to infect the most vulnerable. This was typically seen among older adults and people with underlying diseases such as COPD or cancer. While most of the Nordic people experienced increased social isolation, a substantial yet smaller number of people also felt lonely. Several hypotheses for the supposed mechanisms through which COVID-19 measures might have affected loneliness are discussed below.
Destigmatisation and social comparison
Public discussion of loneliness may have destigmatised people, which in turn may have reduced feelings of loneliness (Hansen et al., 2021c). Luchetti and others (2020) argue that the feeling of being together in the same isolated situation may have increased resilience to loneliness, even among risk groups. Awareness of collective connectedness (we are all in this together) was also given as an explanation by Latikka and others (2022) for the lack of increased loneliness during lockdown. Downward comparison, comparing oneself to others who are even more isolated and lonely, can further alleviate people’s own perception of being alone and its consequences for loneliness. Loneliness is a subjective feeling that occurs ‘when the number of existing relationships (or quantity) is smaller than is considered desirable or admissible, as well as situations where the intimacy (or quality) one wishes for has not been realized’ (de Jong Gierveld, 1987, p. 120). The personal standard about what is ‘desirable or admissible’ may have been lowered during the pandemic, compensating a potential loss of social contacts.
Trust and loneliness
Lacking trust in healthcare systems (Kvarstein et al., 2022, Rydelius et al., 2022), political structures, and the government in how they dealt with the rules of lockdown (Geirdal et al., 2021b) may have increased loneliness during the pandemic. Also, some people whose symptoms were so critical that they needed ICU care may have lost trust in their own bodies’ (Engström et al., 2022). It is conceivable that this, too, contributed to intense feelings of loneliness. Moreover, lack of information or inconsistent information from healthcare professionals or institutions can induce mistrust, and while there was sympathy with the regulations at the beginning of the social restrictions, people became more frustrated the longer the social restrictions lasted (Rokstad et al., 2021). Studies based on European data before the pandemic have found that people with low levels of trust in other people and/or political systems have high levels of loneliness (Hansen et al., 2021a; Rapoliene & Aartsen, 2022). Trust in political system varies across countries, and although the Nordic countries are characterised as high-trust countries, there is still variation between countries and regions (Charron et al., 2022), which may also contribute to regional and national variations in loneliness.
Loneliness and mental health
Psychological characteristics such as mastery (the feeling of being in control over the forces that affect one’s life) and mental health can protect people from loneliness, even if people encounter risks that are normally related to increased feelings of loneliness (Ben-Zur, 2018). In the studies selected for this report, we found that people with more concerns about health and financial consequences were lonelier (Hoffart et al., 2022; Kivi et al., 2021), and people with more anxiety remained lonelier than healthy people (Hoffart et al., 2022). The finding that people who used social media more often were lonelier (Geirdal et al., 2021a) may be caused by upward comparison (comparing oneself to those who were doing better), but it may also indicate a reversed causal path: high frequency of social media use may reflect an addiction to Facebook or other social media, which has been found to be related to more loneliness.