What COVID Data Taught Us About Loneliness

Before we dive in, a quick word on what COVID did beyond the immediate medical response. Beyond the news stories about infection rates and ICU capacity, COVID-19 altered the fabric of our daily lives, how we communicate, date, work, and cope with the awkwardness of an eerily quiet world.

It also left many people feeling disconnected, frustrated, and isolated despite constant screen time. This is important because when social engagement breaks down on a mass level, it’s not just that people “miss each other” in a metaphorical sense, they seek out alternative means of interaction.

As we’ll see below, it didn’t take long for all this social distancing to translate into hard data on loneliness.

The Hidden Side of the Pandemic: Loneliness by the Numbers

Let’s take a look at what that data revealed. COVID-19 gave us a few concrete ways to quantify loneliness. Between April 3rd and May 3rd, 2020, the Office for National Statistics in Great Britain reported that 5.0% of adults said they felt lonely “often or always,” and 30.9% of respondents said their well-being had been affected by loneliness in the previous seven days.

I find that second statistic particularly striking because it shows just how fast the feeling of isolation went from background hum to distinct social trend. Across the European Union, the trend was even more pronounced: the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, drawing on Eurofound data, found that 1 in 4 EU citizens felt lonely most of the time in the first months of the pandemic, more than double the level reported in a comparable 2016 survey.

Screens Became the Backup Plan

As in-person interactions declined, screen time rose to compensate. Again, not in a totally ideal way, “zoom fatigue” wasn’t anyone’s new favorite pastime, but in a “clinging to a lifeline” kind of way. According to Pew Research, in April 2021, 90% of U.S. adults said the internet had been important to them during the pandemic, 58% said it had been essential, 81% had used video calling, and 40% had used technology in new or different ways.

In the UK, Ofcom reported that in April 2020, adults spent an average of 4 hours and 2 minutes online per day, and over 7 in 10 online adults made at least weekly video calls during the lockdown. That’s the real fill-in-the-blank, I think: we didn’t give up on human interaction, we channeled it through screens, apps, platforms, webcams, or whatever else kept the lights of the social web on.

There’s one more thing to add here, and it’s important. The World Health Organization said that the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25% in the first year of the pandemic, with social isolation being one of the leading causes.

So, yes, loneliness was an emotional thing, but it was also something that could be measured, something that was happening on a massive scale, and something that was connected to a larger phenomenon around people turning to the internet when physical life was interrupted.

Why Did Human Connection Become So Much Harder During the Pandemic?

The major factor is that it wasn’t just the big moments of social connection that got lost, it was the little ones too: the brief conversations, the awkward silences, the spontaneous coffees, all of the little moments of micro-connectivity that maintain and deepen relationships in ways we don’t even consciously notice.

With lockdowns, social distancing, remote work and travel restrictions, our relationships started to feel a little empty for many of us; not necessarily broken, but just a little thinner, more brittle, as if we were all trying to stay warm with digital blankets that sort of worked, but weren’t a real substitute for being present.

What Digital Solutions Did People Turn To?

Humans are an incredibly adaptive species, and when normality got taken away, we figured out workarounds: Zoom calls instead of dinner tables; group chats instead of social support networks; dating apps instead of a night out at a bar; online communities instead of shared activities.

Was any of this the same as human connection? Of course not. But when the only alternative is nothing at all, we take what we can get and make do, even if that’s an awkward Zoom call where half the people forget to mute themselves and the other half are in a time zone where it’s still daylight.

This is important, because in the end, the pandemic didn’t take away our need for human connection; it just funnelled that need into digital channels instead, from livestreams to online gaming to social media to instant messaging. Some of those solutions were purely practical; some were comforting; some were a little bizarre, if we’re being honest; but they all speak to the same underlying reality, which is that people weren’t just looking for information and entertainment; they were looking for human connection, even if that connection took the form of pixels on a screen instead of flesh and blood in a room.

Why Are AI Companions Gaining Traction?

AI companions are gaining traction because once people got used to meeting their emotional and social needs digitally, that behavioural shift didn’t simply reverse itself once the pandemic was over.

In fact, for many people, the pandemic accustomed them to talking to a machine; to relying on instant messaging platforms; to expecting a digital response to fill an emotional need in moments of solitude; basically, to demanding the emotional presence of another being, even if it isn’t a human being at all.

And that, I think, is the crux of the issue here: AI companions are always available. They respond immediately. They remember you. They don’t get busy. They don’t leave you hanging for three days before responding with “Sorry just saw this!”. It’s a kind of ersatz intimacy, and yes, it’s a poor substitute for the real thing, but it’s also undeniably convenient in a way that human connection sometimes isn’t.

It’s also a low-pressure way of getting emotional needs met in a world where human connection often requires navigating timing, logistics, social anxiety, mixed signals, and all of the other complexities and nuances of human emotion.

That isn’t to say that AI companionship is a replacement for human companionship, personally, I don’t think it is, or at least I don’t think it should be, but it is to say that once you factor in loneliness, digitalisation, and the improving quality of conversational AI, it’s pretty easy to see why it’s gaining traction.

The Negatives of Trading Human for Artificial

All of that said, there are negatives to trading human for artificial, even when the artificial is pleasant and the AI very conversational. I can talk to the AI, and it will talk back, and it will never complain that I’m texting it at 2am, etc. But, human relationships are a pain in the ass for a reason.

They’re hard, they’re frustrating, they’re unpredictable. AI is designed to make your life easier, and if you lean on it too much you’re in danger of isolating yourself in an echo chamber where the interactions feel nice but don’t necessarily encourage you to go out and interact with the rest of the world. And, there’s also an emotional labor balance to consider.

If it becomes easiest to talk to the AI, to complain to the AI, to share private thoughts with the AI, you’re taking that away from interactions you could otherwise be having with your partner, friends, or family. I’m not saying AI companions are bad or anything;

I think if used properly they could be a net positive in terms of helping people feel less isolated. But, you have to remember they’re tools, not people. They can create the illusion of companionship but they can’t replicate the mess and complexity and beauty of human interaction.

Final Thoughts

COVID has a number of lasting impacts, outside of the medical and the political, one of which is what it showed us about human beings when everything else was taken away. With the routine of daily life paused and social distancing in effect, many of us were forced to come face to face with the importance of daily human connection.

We saw increased rates of loneliness, increased rates of screen time, and a digital shift that probably would have taken ten years in the absence of a pandemic. We saw tech struggle to fill the gaps this created, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes remarkably successfully. And, that’s why I think AI companions belong in this conversation around digital human connection.

They’re not the answer to all of our problems, and they’re not a replacement for human connection, but they’re a part of the broader conversation around how humans adapted to a world that had radically changed. COVID pushed us into a mostly digital culture, and AI is a feature of that world. The question, moving forward, isn’t really human or artificial so much as how to balance the two so neither one crowds the other out.