By Maxime St Pierre

“I’m going home to my friends and family!” I said on March 11^th, 2020 as I planned to leave the following morning from Colorado College during my senior year. That was me thinking that life would be much better at home during the novel Coronavirus which had just been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) that day. What I did not know was how much social isolation I would be in upon my arrival in Canada. In the following weeks, and weeks prior, the world seemed to have taken a turn for the worst as governments implemented social distancing guidelines globally. This social isolation is damaging of all the nodes within our social networks. The damaging of social networks requires immediate attention. Social distancing continues to be detrimental for most friendships and other relationships because it denies them the opportunity to be intimate with one another, leading to an increased sense of loneliness amongst the nodes of a social network despite the emergence of online communities.

Social networks function based on the relationship between nodes, it is a set of relations between actors. I argue that everyone, in some way, has social networks in which they are connected to others. Actors in a network can vary, they can be family or friends. The main connections that I will be discussing are friendships and familial relationships. An interesting thing about ties is that they have varying strengths and there are different ways of thinking about this strength. One way is by the intensity of a relationship (loving vs liking someone) and the other by measuring how many different types of content that the tie contains (a roommate vs. a roommate that you also play sports with and go to school/work together) (Giuffre 2013). Previous literature shows us that there has been extensive debate on the community’s presence in contemporary societies. The literature has also neglected the causes of social support within social networks and how ties can be supportive. One study, Different Strokes from Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support by Barry Wellman and Scot Wortley, out of the University of Toronto, provides extensive explanations for the interpersonal provision of support. They examine several types of support, provide detailed information about the characteristics of network members and their relationships, and compare the supportiveness of strong and weaker relationships. They found that:

“The combination of abundance and tie strength means that strong ties with friends, neighbours, and siblings make up about half of all supportive relationships. Because friends make up a large portion of these networks, their supportiveness is crucial.  However, the aid that friends exchange depends on the strength of their relationships. Yet friends who are rarely seen or who live far apart tend to have weaker, less supportive ties”. (Wellman and Wortley 1990)

Based on this framework, one can assume that the social distancing guidelines in place have a weakening effect on the strength of ties between friends and thus a weakening of the support provided to one another. With the added health risks during a pandemic, societies now have the added strain of a weakened support system. This issue will most likely affect many individuals, globally, and have compound effects on their quality of life. One of the interviewee’s responses during our fieldwork relates to this idea. He established that he had moved back home, from abroad, due to the Coronavirus outbreak. His experience is one that is similar to many students’. However, he moved into a place where he did not know anyone but his brother he lived with. He later discussed that “The only thing that sucks for me is that … I had to leave Colorado where all my friends were” “It’s trash!” I don’t F**king know anyone here!”. In a time where social interaction in a physical space is restricted, it becomes difficult for isolated individuals to have support from friend groups other than online.

In theory, prior to the current global pandemic’s emergence, there was already debate about the future of social communities. Would the internet create wonderful new forms of community or destroy it altogether? The century-old worry about community is being rediscovered as technological changes occur, especially now since Coronavirus has made more people rely on the internet due to social distancing guidelines. In Barry Wellman and Milem Gidia’s Net-Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities, they acknowledge that “ Despite the limited social presence of online links, the Net successfully maintains strong, supportive community ties, and it may be increasing the number and diversity of weak ties. The Net is especially suited to maintaining intermediate-strength ties between people who cannot see each other frequently”. There is no doubt that the internet creates spaces in which people can give and receive support like other forms of community, but the virtual communities differ from real-life communities. The people within the network have a greater tendency to develop feelings of closeness based on shared interests rather than social characteristics. These homogeneous interests enable the nodes of the network to foster higher levels of mutual support, but they lack other forms of intimacy, like physicality. During our fieldwork, one of my interviewees mentions that “I’m a very sociable person and always spending time with friends, it has been a learning curve”. He goes on to say that he participates in weekly Zoom calls with his friends. This complete flip in lifestyle has affected him mentally with the lack of intimacy and comradery with his friends. This interviewee also mentions that “now I’m restricted to behind a screen, I don’t think anyone can say it’s been easy for them, and if they are, they are probably lying, but it comes and goes. Some days are worse than others”. This interview speaks directly to the issue that we are social beings and, for some, being behind a screen is insufficient at times and could have some impacts on quality of life.

In summary, COVID-19 has had tremendous consequences for relationships, and it is still damaging our social networks. At the time that this project is taking place, there are still travel bans across countries, provinces, and states globally with self-isolation regulations in place to ensure people returning home from abroad are quarantining themselves. This pandemic is a new type of stress that has not been felt by many generations living today. I argue that social distancing is increasing loneliness by reducing interaction and intimacy between the nodes of a social network. This weakening of the social web of ties is an immediate issue. The guidelines have increased the number of communities online, but loneliness remains. This lack of intimacy in the physical spaces of bodies might lead to people disregarding guidelines, and potentially their physical and mental health, as well as leading them to feelings of sadness. Both are potential outcomes which are not discussed in this analysis. I conclude by saying that technological advances and internet dependency during COVID-19 supports a large number of community ties, especially non-intimate ones, but the lack of intimate relationships and support received by strongly tied friend groups do have impacts on individuals. Personally, I constantly think about how my isolation to my friends has reduced the level of intimacy I share with them and I still ponder about how our relationships will evolve from social distancing when this global pandemic subsides if it subsides!

 

Giuffre, Katherine Anne 2013Communities And Networks. Cambridge: Polity.

Granovetter, Mark S. 1973The Strength Of Weak Ties. American Journal Of Sociology 78(6). University of Chicago Press: 1360-1380.

Hampton, Keith, and Barry Wellman 2003Neighboring In Netville: How The Internet Supports Community And Social Capital In A Wired Suburb. City And Community 2(4). Wiley: 277-311.

Wellman, Barry, and Milena GuliaVirtual Communities As Communities.

Wellman, Barry, and Scot Wortley 1990Different Strokes From Different Folks. [Toronto]: Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto.