What will it mean to rediscover in-person socialization in a post-covid world?
With the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine comes an existential question: how hard will it be to switch from online communication back to in-person socialization?
These days, when passing someone on the street, we tend to walk on opposite sides of the sidewalk, negating eye-contact, even if we are both wearing a mask. It would be a weird phenomenon at any other point in history, but almost one year into the coronavirus pandemic, avoiding human interaction in public spaces has become second-nature to us.
On one hand, the further apart we are and the less we interact with one another, the safer we are physically. On the other hand, the less safe we are mentally.
Years of research show that in-person socialization and non-screen activities are good for our mental health while online communication, especially social media, is bad. Unfortunately, it has been really difficult to socialize in person over the last year, forcing us to discover new online communication methods instead, which is contributing to the diminishment of our collective mental health.
According to a recent poll from the Canadian Mental Health Association and the University of British Columbia, 40 percent of Canadians have seen their mental health deteriorate since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, including 60 percent of people aged 18-24. In fact, Canadians are reporting higher levels of anxiety and depression than ever before. While there are other contributing factors including economic insecurity and virus-related anxiety, it turns out that communicating through FaceTime and Zoom simply isn’t enough human contact to keep many Canadians mentally stable.
Fortunately, with the slow but progressive rollout of the coronavirus vaccine in the coming months, we will once again be able to interact with friends and family in-person. Strangers, even, will soon be allowed to talk to one another on the streets in a way necessary for community-building. But I fear that making the switch back to in-person socialization may not be as easy as some people think, especially without the proper resources in place.
After all, by forcing us online — where we have sharpened our virtual communication skills and our ability to express certain emotions through technology — the pandemic has led to the deterioration of our in-person communication and people skills. Young people are especially susceptible to the diminishment of people skills, because they have historically relied on institutions such as school to practice developing their in-person socialization skills but have been relegated to online school for months. While it’s true that avoiding anxiety-provoking situations can be good for those with social anxiety, the gradual exposure to social interactions is beneficial to those living with social anxiety disorder as it allows them to conquer their fears and build confidence.
It’s even more concerning when we think about people with pre-existing mental health conditions such as anxiety or depression, who are for the most part not getting the help they need during the pandemic.
Mental health services have always been expensive, and the added hurdle of taking place online has led to only three percent of Canadians using virtual mental health services, according to the same poll. Among those who reported experiencing a mental health concern during the pandemic but did not seek help, 22 percent said they didn’t know that the resources exist, 17 percent preferred in-person health care supports, and 11 percent cited privacy concerns.
It’s optimistic to assume that people will seamlessly switch from online communication back to in-person socialization once it is safe to do so, but this would be to forget the way society was already trending prior to the coronavirus pandemic. As Jean M. Twenge explains in iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of Us, “iGen’ers were seeing their friends in person an hour less a day than GenX’ers and early Millennials did. An hour less a day spent with friends is an hour a day less spent building social skills, negotiating relationships, and navigating emotions.”
Instead of socializing in person, young people were increasingly isolated and lonely even prior to the pandemic, spending more time on their phones. Will some young people simply choose to continue communicating with friends and strangers through technology? Or will all these months in isolation encourage them to meet up with their friends in-person? Hopefully, the latter situation comes to fruition, but as I mentioned before, it won’t be easy to socialize in-person after so many months of being conditioned to avoid human contact, and there will likely be an uptick in social anxiety for those who have gotten little to no practise socializing in-person over the past year.
With the absence of easily accessible and affordable mental health services to support people as they make this transition, we could be looking at a longer than suspected period of time before it feels natural to communicate with friends and strangers in-person again.
As one of my favourite author’s Douglas Coupland writes in his novel Bit Rot:
“I suspect that abandoning one’s pre-internet brain is the only intelligent adaptive strategy necessary for mental health in the world of a perpetual future”
The same could be said about abandoning one’s pre-pandemic brain, but while it is too late to go back to a world with no internet, it is not too late to go back to one in which in-person socialization is the norm and online communication comes secondary.
Notes:
Question (please respond in the comments)
Can you think of any strategies/techniques for young (or old) people to adopt to make the switch back to in-person socialization easier?
If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll share it with friends using this link:
And subscribe to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox for free using this link:
I’m always looking for writing work! If you have any leads, email: orenweisfeld@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter: @orenweisfeld. My published work can be found here.