Results

Based on a literature review, this report answers the following questions: 1) What was the impact of the pandemic in terms of loneliness and social isolation, 2) Which groups were particularly susceptible to loneliness and social isolation?, 3) What were the typical mechanisms for this; and 4) Did the findings vary across the Nordic countries?

Most of the selected studies for this report were based on Norwegian people (10 studies) or included people from Norway and other countries (5), followed by studies based on Danish people (10) or studies including Danish and other people (2), Sweden (9), Finland (6), and Faroe Islands (1) (see Table 1). We are not aware of studies with people from Greenland, Iceland, or Åland that met our selection criteria. The selected studies have a wide variety of study populations. Twenty-eight studies had samples drawn from the general population, including the whole population (2), the older population (11), the younger population (2), informal caregivers (2), and other subgroups (workers, unemployed people, and people using social media; 11 in total). Seventeen studies were based on clinical samples (people with COVID-19, diabetes, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or psychiatric illnesses), and four on groups at risk (pregnant women, those at risk of dementia, and people with disabilities).

The 45 studies selected for this review were categorised as focusing on the following groups of people: older adults, younger adults, people with health problems or disabilities, social media users, pregnant women, and informal caregivers.

A large online survey in Norway among more than 10,000 people found that the proportion of older (65+) people feeling lonely during the first months of the pandemic was two to three times lower than among younger age groups (aged 18–24 years). Almost 10 per cent of the older men and 11–14 per cent of the older women were lonely, compared to 28 per cent of the younger men and 21 per cent of the younger women. Loneliness increased slightly during the first months of the pandemic with 0.4 to 1.8 per cent for 65+ men, and with 2 to 6.5 per cent for older women (Hansen et al., 2021c). In the second half of November 2020 – at the start of the second wave and after prolonged health threats and social distancing – the same people were contacted again. Now the increase in loneliness as compared to before the pandemic was more substantial especially for older women, regardless of educational background or place of residence (rural area or city), (Hansen et al., 2021b). While the prevalence of loneliness was lower among older adults, they felt lonely for a longer time. For some, loneliness remained at a higher level even after the regulations were lifted (Hoffart et al., 2020).

A Danish study (Clotworthy et al., 2021) collected online data during the first months of the pandemic among older people (65+), families with children living at home, and the general population (aged 18–87). The researchers did not measure loneliness but raised one question about social isolation. Overall, feelings of social isolation increased slightly in the oldest age groups but were rather stable in the general population and in families with children. It was concluded that people in Denmark coped well with respect to loneliness during the first wave of the pandemic, although the majority was worried about someone close to them becoming seriously ill. In another Danish study, Pedersen et al. (2022) collected data at 43 points in time from March 20, 2020, until shortly after the second wave (July 22, 2021). The study found a fluctuating pattern in the development of social isolation and loneliness for all ages, with peaks in social isolation and loneliness during the lockdown periods. Danish older adults experienced lower levels of loneliness than younger age groups during the first 16 months of the pandemic.

In a wealthy urban area in Stockholm, Beridze and others (2022) conducted telephone interviews during the first months of the pandemic to investigate, among others, loneliness among people aged 68+. Study participants (N=1231) came from the Swedish national study on aging and care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K), a downtown area of Stockholm with higher socio-economic positions than in the average population in Sweden. The findings are therefore not representative for the whole older population in Sweden. Overall, Beridze and colleagues found that one-third (33.4 per cent) felt severely lonely. To put this percentage into perspective, the pre-pandemic prevalence figures ranged from 7 per cent (Yang & Victor, 2011) to 13 per cent (Dahlberg et al., 2018) and 14 per cent (Sonde & Johansson, 2020) among older adults in Sweden. Conclusions that the higher prevalence in Kungsholmen is due to the pandemic are, however, compromised by the nonrepresentative sample. In another Swedish study among older adults aged 65–71 years (Kivi et al., 2021), the level of loneliness was rather stable over four years preceding the pandemic and including the first two months of the pandemic.

We found two Finnish studies that investigated the impact of the pandemic on the social life of older adults, one qualitative study (Kulmala et al., 2021) and one quantitative study (Latikka et al., 2022). In the quantitative study of older adults until the age of 77 (Latikka et al., 2022), it was found that the prevalence of loneliness shortly after the first wave (May–June 2020) was 9.7 per cent. This is similar to the prevalence of loneliness in December 2017 (9.8 per cent) but lower than in March-April 2019 (11.4 per cent). Note that this prevalence is based on the 21–77 age group and that the results were not specified by age group.

In the qualitive study among 15 people aged 80+ living in eastern Finland, Kulmala et al. (2021) examined changes in social contacts during the first and second wave of the pandemic. During this time, the number of in-person social contacts reduced significantly, and many of the 15 study participants felt socially isolated. However, the researchers also found that for some people the number of people with whom they interacted had increased, as some contacts were re-established with friends who they had not met in many years. For another group, in-person contacts were replaced by online social contacts, for example by means of calling or using WhatsApp or other social media. Some were careful to a fault, avoiding all in-person contacts and at times refusing help with going for a walk, because they did not want to be a burden. They felt that they lacked the cognitive capacities to learn how to interact socially online and refused to use social media. It is this latter group where loneliness increased during the first two waves of the pandemic. However, results of this qualitative study cannot be extrapolated to the general older population because of the small non-representative sample.

One study addressed older adults living in the Faroe Islands (Eliasen et al., 2022). In total, 227 people aged between 82 and 87 were included in the telephone interviews. Most of these people stayed in voluntary isolation at home. The prevalence of loneliness at the end of the first wave increased from 7 per cent two years before the pandemic to 22 per cent in June–July 2020 (Eliasen et al., 2022). However, the assessment basis of loneliness changed from a self-administered questionnaire before the pandemic to a telephone interview during the pandemic. People may be reluctant to admit in a personal interview that they are lonely, which means that the real increase may be (slightly) higher. There was no information about social isolation, but two questions about satisfaction with social relations and satisfaction with supportive friends suggested that people were happier with their social networks during the pandemic than before.

Based on an online survey in Norway among more than 10,000 people, Hoffart and colleagues published two studies that also included young people. The data collection is representative for the whole population, except for gender and education, where women and higher educated people are overrepresented. The first study (Hoffart et al., 2020) was conducted when the social distancing regulations were implemented for two weeks. In these weeks, levels of loneliness were higher in the younger age groups as compared to the older adults, but age differences were small. On a scale from 8 to 32 where higher scores indicate more loneliness, every year younger was related to a 0.02 higher score on the scale. After most social distancing protocols were lifted, loneliness was measured again (Hoffart et al., 2022). It was found to be stable among most (80 per cent) of the younger adults, but it increased among 7.4 per cent and reduced among 13.6 per cent of the younger adults. Younger adults recovered more quickly than older adults, when the regulations were lifted.

Other studies have also observed a higher prevalence of loneliness among younger as compared to older adults. In Denmark, the younger adults felt loneliest and most isolated during the pandemic compared to all other age groups (both during and after the waves) (Pedersen et al., 2022). In the online study by Hansen et al. (2021c), it was also observed that the prevalence of loneliness was higher among the youngest cohorts (18–24 years) at the beginning of the pandemic in Norway. More than one quarter of the younger men (28 per cent) and one out of five of the younger women (compared to 8–9 per cent for older men and 11–14 per cent for older women) felt lonely during the first wave. The higher prevalence of loneliness among younger adults can only partly be attributed to the pandemic, as loneliness increased with a relatively modest 4.7 per cent in younger men and was stable for most of the younger women.

It can be argued that people with mental, cognitive, or functional health problems and people with functional disabilities are a specific group of people with respect to loneliness and social isolation. Their symptoms of COVID-19 might be more severe and their fear of getting infected higher. Consequently, people self-isolated to a great extent, which in turn increased the risk for loneliness. Studies have found that the social impact of the disease has been particularly severe for people with health problems or functional limitations.

One study (Engström et al., 2022) examined COVID-19 patients who had been treated in ICUs. These people expressed strong feelings of isolation and loneliness, and had nightmares about terrifying events, death, and dying, even months after hospital discharge (Heiberg et al., 2022). We do not know whether the strong feelings of loneliness and isolation were a consequence of the isolation of COVID patients, or if they related to the life-threatening disease as such, but similar results for loneliness were found in another study among people with a life-threatening disease such as cancer (Hanghøj et al., 2021). Not being able to provide or receive support was challenging. Some also had to make vital decisions on their own as access to the hospitals and doctors was restricted to the patients alone. This arguably impacted heavily on their feelings of loneliness. It was concluded that the forced isolation from meaningful contacts was the most important reason for the loneliness of people with a life-threatening disease.

In a qualitative study among 13 chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients (Mousing & Sørensen, 2021), it was observed that this group of patients often self-isolated because of their intense fear of dying of COVID. This led to intense and frequent feelings of loneliness and being forgotten or isolated. Not only was contact with friends and relatives limited, but they also missed the contact with healthcare professionals. Telephone and video calls could substitute the physical contacts to some extent. Self-isolation was also identified in another Danish study of (Kusk et al., 2021), in which 18 people with COPD were interviewed shortly after the end of the first COVID wave (June–July 2020). These patients felt similarly forgotten and not being part of society. Some were completely isolated for weeks, only seeing the family through the window.

There are concerns that people with mental health problems may be particularly vulnerable to the impact of the pandemic. We found five studies that included people with mental health problems. In an online survey during the first months of the pandemic among a representative sample of people with mental disorders living in Denmark, Kølbæk and others (2021) observed that more than half of the sample felt that their mental health became worse during the pandemic because of increased feelings of loneliness and the social isolation. In a Norwegian online survey that took place two weeks after the implementation of the first lockdown, Hoffart and colleagues (2020) recognised that people with a psychiatric diagnosis, and those with anxiety and depressive symptoms, were lonelier than mentally healthy people. The differences, however, were small. According to Pedersen and others (2022), people with one or more mental illnesses felt more socially isolated during the whole pandemic than did people without mental illness. Feelings of social isolation were highest during the lockdowns and faded as soon as the society re-opened. Also, loneliness was more common among people with mental illnesses as compared to people without them, but in contrast with developments in social isolation, loneliness did not fade immediately after lockdown ended. Finally, Barrett and others (2021) found that more than half (55 per cent) of the people with a bipolar and/or psychotic disorder were lonely and 51 per cent felt that their condition got worse during the first lockdown (data from June 2020). Also, 76 per cent of the people with a bipolar and/or psychotic disorder felt socially isolated, while 69 per cent said that social isolation became stronger during the first lockdown.

A quantitative Finnish study (Lehtisalo et al., 2021) during the first months of the pandemic included older adults with an increased risk of cognitive impairment. Most (80 per cent) of them had one or more chronic diseases. Based on a postal questionnaire among 613 older adults with an average age of 77, it was observed that three quarters of the respondents adopted social isolation practices, mostly by reducing contact with friends and some by reducing contacts with family. Approximately one-third of the respondents felt totally isolated (self-initiated or authority-enforced), while loneliness increased for only 21 per cent of the people during the first wave. Other study participants (40 per cent in total) increased remote contacts with others. People who lived with a partner and did not adhere to any of the social distancing regulations did not feel isolated. The authors concluded that older adults with cognitive problems and often with other diseases as well as those living alone were more susceptible to increased feelings of social loneliness. Overall, however, the negative effects on loneliness among Finnish older adults were smaller than the authors had expected.

People with diabetes feared being affected by the virus, and those who had more worries also felt more lonely and more socially isolated (Joensen et al., 2020). These people with diabetes were followed over time and interviewed six times between March 19 and June 2020 (Madsen et al., 2021). Loneliness increased slightly during the first weeks of the pandemic by 0.4 scale points (on a scale of 3–9) but decreased after the regulations expired. In that same period, feelings of social isolation did not change until May 2020, but reduced significantly after this (1.9 scale points on a scale of 1–10). The decline in loneliness and social isolation may be related to the lifting of the social restrictions, as the Danish society began to re-open from May 8 (Madsen et al., 2021). There was no comparison with a healthy group, which is why we cannot conclude whether effects of the pandemic on loneliness and social isolation were different for people without diabetes. Nevertheless, increases in loneliness in the first weeks of the pandemic are modest and, in line with other studies, loneliness reduced once the restrictions were lifted.

In July 2020, 38 community-dwelling older adults (50+, average age 78 years) living in Stjørdal (Norway) who received health and/or care services were interviewed about the ways in which the COVID-19 restrictions had affected services and the quality of life of service recipients (Kjerkol et al., 2020). Stjørdal is a small municipality of approximately 25,000 inhabitants and with a mix of rural and urban areas. People with dementia and seriously ill and terminal patients were not included. When asked how loneliness had changed, the majority (23 of the 38 respondents) said that they felt lonelier in July 2020 than before the pandemic started. This increase in loneliness among people who received home care was confirmed by the service providers to whom the care recipients also told that they had felt lonelier after the COVID-19 restrictions had been imposed.

Based on population-based data from the Finnish survey on health, welfare, and services, a survey was carried out in 2020 to 2021 among people aged 20+ (N= 22,165) to investigate whether people with disabilities – those with impaired mobility, vision, hearing, or cognition, and any other disabilities – reported more loneliness than people without disabilities (Holm et al., 2021). It turned out that all disability groups, except those with vision disabilities, reported significantly more often increased loneliness than people without disabilities, but the disability groups did not differ from people without disabilities in terms of decreased social contacts.

Three studies relevant for this report drew on social media users living in Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia (Geirdal et al., 2021a, 2021b; Ruffolo et al., 2021). Data were collected online during the first wave (April/May 2020). Compared to other countries, Norwegian social media users had the lowest levels of loneliness. On a scale of 0–24, where higher levels indicate more loneliness, the average level was 7.8 in Norway, 10.2 in the US, 11.0 in the UK, and 9.4 in Australia (Geirdal et al., 2021b). In Norway, female social media users were slightly more lonely than male social media users (difference 0.5 scale points). Interestingly, people who had a high frequency of social media use were on average 0.4 scale points lonelier than less frequent social media users. As data in this study was collected only once, we cannot conclude that it is the social media use itself or the replacement of in-person contacts with online contacts that make people lonelier. It may also be that lonelier people use social media more often. Moreover, the associations are between two variables, which means that the association can be caused by other factors, such as age: younger adults use social media more frequently and are more often lonely. Also, the association between social media use and loneliness was not specified for the countries separately. The association may have been driven by one of the countries.

In a follow-up study, Geirdal and colleagues (Geirdal et al., 2021a) investigated stability and change in loneliness among social media users between April 2020 and nine months later (November 2020). One-fifth (n=771) of the April 2020 study and 16 per cent (n=547) of the November 2020 study were Norwegian. Most (77 per cent) of the study participants in the total sample were female. Age differences in the prevalence of loneliness in Norway in April and November were small but significant, with younger social media users being slightly more lonely than older social media users. Living alone was significantly associated with higher levels of loneliness in Norway and the other countries. The average level of loneliness among social media users in Norway increased from April 2020 to November 2020 by 0.6 scale points (on a scale from 0 to 24). This increase was significant among younger adults and people living alone. While female social media users were slightly lonelier on average than male social media users in the total sample, the gender differences were no longer significant in Norway when controlling for other sociodemographic variables[1].

A study among social media users specifically compared loneliness  of unemployed people (n=125) with those who are employed (n=646) (Ruffolo et al., 2021). Unemployed people in Norway had higher levels of social loneliness (i.e., one point higher on a scale of 0–12) and higher levels of emotional loneliness (1 point higher). The effect of being unemployed on loneliness during the pandemic was moderate (Cohens d = 0.45).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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.

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).

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A qualitative study by Kulmala and others (2021) found that some people responded to social distancing by creating new ways of socialising with others (e.g., WhatsApp, online meeting with social groups, meetings held on the balcony, wearing of facemasks, and increased use of the telephone). Others reactivated old contacts, and for some, pets were an important source for meaningful activity. Some people followed the regulations conscientiously, were afraid to be a burden for others, and insisted on, for example, taking a walk on their own and refused any help. Yet others felt that they lacked the capacities to learn new digital tools and did not use them. It was in this group that a sense of loneliness increased, but there is no quantitative data to confirm this claim.

Several studies covered in this report found that while younger adults were lonelier during the pandemic, they also recovered more quickly than older people once the restrictions were lifted. It is hard to pinpoint the underlying mechanism behind these age differences, but Bu et al. (2020) suggest that younger adults have more need to be in physical contact with other people, and once contacts are restored, loneliness reduces.

There are several remarkable differences between the Nordic countries in the development and number of cases, deaths, ICU admissions, and excess mortality. Also, the timing of the regulations differed, with Sweden notably applying a more liberal strategy and less strict social distancing rules during the first wave. However, it is difficult to say whether subgroups, mechanisms, or the severity of loneliness varied in the Nordic region, as there are no studies directly comparing the Nordic countries.

Of the 45 studies examined in this report, only one (Wester et al., 2022) included data from more than one Nordic country, in this case Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. In their study, Wester and others used COVID data collected in June–August 2020 from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). This data could be compared with SHARE data collected shortly before the pandemic (October–March 2020). However, the researchers combined the data of all 27 EU countries, obscuring the specific situation in the Nordic countries. However, countries were compared in terms loneliness, among some other mental wellbeing-factors. Loneliness increased by 2.9 per cent in Denmark, remained stable in Sweden, and decreased by 7.7 per cent in Finland from before the pandemic to shortly after the first wave.

[1] This was a repeated cross-sectional study, which means that respondents included in April were not the same as those that were included in November. However, the researchers controlled for important social demographics, which means that the many changes cannot be attributed to potential differences in age, gender, education, civil status, employment, place of employment (e.g., healthcare, or industry) and urbanicity.