Changes in daily loneliness for German residents during the first four weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Rationale: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has dramatically altered people's social lives due to social restriction measures taken to control the coronavirus spread. Early on, increased loneliness has been publicly discussed as a harmful psychological side effect of these measures. Due to the serious adverse health consequences of loneliness, it is essential to take these concerns seriously and investigate them systematically to allow for evidence-based decision making. Thus far, however, high-resolution empirical evidence of such harmful side effects is rare. Methods: The present preregistered large-scale daily diary study assessed daily loneliness in 4,844 German adults between March 16 and April 12, 2020. Results and conclusion: Daily loneliness slightly increased during the first two weeks since implementing the pandemic-related measures and slightly decreased thereafter. With increasing age, daily loneliness increased more strongly over the four weeks. Moreover, daily loneliness increased more strongly for parents compared to people without children. Thus, despite some increases in loneliness in some individuals, there was no linear increase in loneliness in response to the first pandemic-related measures in the present sample.

Loneliness and social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review enriched with empirical evidence from a large-scale diary study

“…Therefore, they only present a snapshot of loneliness and social isolation in an environment that changes from day to day. For an exception, Buecker, Horstmann, et al (2020) found that, on average, loneliness slightly increased during the first two weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic but decreased thereafter. A recent study from Switzerland (Seifert & Hassler, 2020) found that loneliness increased after the Swiss government recommended contact restrictions and slightly decreased after these restrictions were eased.…”

“…If one assumes that loneliness changes during the Covid-19 pandemic are non-linear, studies examining changes in loneliness at different time points will necessarily come to different conclusions. Suppose loneliness is assessed years before the pandemic and again in the first few weeks during the pandemic, where loneliness increased (Buecker, Horstmann, et al, 2020): In that case, a study may report an increase from before to during the pandemic. However, if a study examines loneliness a few months later when loneliness levels have decreased already, no overall increase might be observed.…”

“…For the second research objective, we used the Bochum Berlin COVID-19 Study data, a largescale (N = 4,823) daily diary study conducted between March 16, 2020, and April 12, 2020 1 . Data from this study have been published elsewhere (Buecker, Horstmann, et al, 2020;, but data analyzed in the current study have not been analyzed or published before.…”

“…However, the empirical evidence on this assumption is inconclusive. Some studies have found an increase in loneliness, whereas other studies report relatively stable loneliness trends (e.g., Buecker, Horstmann, et al, 2020;Luchetti et al, 2020;Stefana et al, 2020). Moreover, it is unclear whether the pandemic-related measures were associated with changes in the perceived quality of one's social relationships, the quantity of one's social relationships, or both.…”

COVID-19 and Eating Problems in Daily Life: the Mediating Roles of Stress, Negative Affect and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms

“…First, it might be that a decrease in mental health symptoms occurred after some initial COVID-19 outbreak increase (Brose et al, 2020). For example, Buecker et al (2020) used a daily diary study to assess daily loneliness and found that loneliness slightly increased during the rst two weeks since implementing the pandemic-related measures and slightly decreased thereafter. Notably, Chinese authorities imposed lockdown measures on January 23, 2020 (Wang et al, 2020).…”