Socially Distant? How COVID-19 Eroded Our Social Networks — and Our Health
When social distancing measures cut people off from their close confidants, loneliness surged — and so did declines in self-rated health. Tracked in real time across two pandemic-onset waves.
What we studied
The COVID-19 pandemic forced an unprecedented experiment in social isolation. Governments around the world ordered people to stay home, closed workplaces and schools, and banned social gatherings. These measures were necessary to slow the virus — but what did they do to the social fabric that keeps people healthy?
We focused on a specific chain of consequences: fewer close confidants → more loneliness → worse self-rated health. A "social network confidant" is someone you can discuss intimate or personal matters with. Research had long established that these relationships buffer against loneliness, and that loneliness in turn damages health.
But no one had tracked these changes in real time as a pandemic unfolded. Using the Canadian Quality of Work and Economic Life Study (C-QWELS), we surveyed 2,456 working Canadians in March 2020 — just as stay-at-home orders were put in place — and again two months later in May. This gave us a rare window into what actually happened to social connection and health during the first critical weeks of the pandemic.
What we found
Between March and May 2020, the average number of social network confidants among Canadian workers fell sharply. At the same time, loneliness increased — and self-rated health declined. These changes happened independently of each other, meaning both the loss of confidants and the rise in loneliness each contributed separately to worsening health perceptions.
Roughly 27 percent of participants reported a decline in their self-rated health over the two-month period. Most of these declines were in the middle and upper ranges of the health scale — people who had considered themselves in very good or excellent health were slipping to good or fair. The role of loneliness as a mechanism was especially clear at the start of the pandemic.
At baseline, loneliness entirely explained the link between having fewer confidants and perceiving worse health — a pattern called total mediation. Having fewer close relationships is bad for perceived health because it makes people feel lonely. There was also a compounding vulnerability effect: people who were already lonelier at the start of the pandemic fared worse as it progressed — regardless of how their loneliness changed over those two months.
Those entering the crisis already socially adrift were at the greatest risk. As the paper puts it: people who started off lonelier on the eve of the pandemic ended up experiencing worse health — suggesting the initial months of COVID-19 composed a period of heightened vulnerability for population health.
What this means
Three evidence-based suggestions for clinicians, policymakers, and communities follow.
Screen for social isolation — especially in the early days of a crisis
The steepest declines in social connection and health occurred within the first two months of stay-at-home orders. Health professionals should not wait for loneliness to manifest as a clinical complaint. Brief, validated screening tools for social isolation should be integrated into routine care during emergencies, when the erosion of social networks is happening fastest and the window for early intervention is narrowest.
Social connection is infrastructure — fund it accordingly
Social distancing policies save lives from infectious disease, but they carry measurable costs for population health through increased loneliness. Future pandemic responses should pair physical distancing mandates with coordinated investments in social connection: expanding access to telehealth and virtual counselling, funding community organizations that facilitate peer support, and creating national service programs where volunteers provide one-on-one support for the most isolated. The goal is to protect people from the virus without leaving them socially adrift.
The most vulnerable were lonely before the pandemic began
Those who entered the pandemic with weaker social networks and higher baseline loneliness experienced the worst health outcomes. This means pre-pandemic investments in social connection — community programming, reducing social isolation in older adults, addressing the structural roots of loneliness in minority and low-income communities — are also investments in crisis resilience. A society's capacity to weather the next pandemic depends in part on the strength of its social bonds going in.