COVID-19 Loneliness Survey: How Social Distancing And Shelter-In-Place During COVID-19 Affected Feelings Of Loneliness

Women’s Health Interactive conducted an exclusive and anonymous survey of 1,043 people exploring to what extent being isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic had on feelings of loneliness.
We measured loneliness before and during social distancing/shelter-in-place orders and broke that data down by gender, generation, and living arrangements. We additionally gathered data on how remote contact alleviated (or didn’t alleviate) loneliness by generation, along with the hardest parts of living in quarantine and the most-missed activities.
Beyond finding that loneliness nearly tripled (+181%), we discovered that loneliness was higher in women than in men. Millennials were loneliest overall but Baby Boomers and Generation X saw the biggest increases in loneliness during the pandemic.
In terms of remote contact (Zoom, FaceTime, etc.), connecting through virtual means surprisingly helped Baby Boomers the most, with 47% saying that it helped to alleviate their feelings of loneliness (only 10.8% said it made their loneliness worse).
This stood in stark contrast to Millennials, 21.1% of whom said remote contact made their loneliness worse (42.5% said it helped to alleviate loneliness during the pandemic).
For Generation X respondents, 37.8% said remote contact helped their loneliness, while 14.9% said it made their loneliness worse.
We’ve presented our findings in visual form here and shared anonymous quotes from survey respondents throughout. A more detailed breakdown of these statistics can be found on our website.

Infographic Source: https://www.womens-health.com/covid-19-loneliness-survey