Virtual Contact Worse Than No Contact For Over-60s In Lockdown, Says Study (theguardian.com) 77
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Virtual contact during the pandemic made many over-60s feel lonelier and more depressed than no contact at all, new research has found. Many older people stayed in touch with family and friends during lockdown using the phone, video calls, and other forms of virtual contact. Zoom choirs, online book clubs and virtual bedtime stories with grandchildren helped many stave off isolation. But the study, among the first to comparatively assess social interactions across households and mental wellbeing during the pandemic, found many older people experienced a greater increase in loneliness and long-term mental health disorders as a result of the switch to online socializing than those who spent the pandemic on their own.
The problem [said Dr Yang Hu of Lancaster University, who co-wrote the report, published on Monday in Frontiers in Sociology] was that older people unfamiliar with technology found it stressful to learn how to use it. But even those who were familiar with technology often found the extensive use of the medium over lockdown so stressful that it was more damaging to their mental health than simply coping with isolation and loneliness. "Extensive exposure to digital means of communication can also cause burnout. The results are very consistent," said Hu, who collected data from 5,148 people aged 60 or over in the UK and 1,391 in the US -- both before and during the pandemic. "It's not only loneliness that was made worse by virtual contact, but general mental health: these people were more depressed, more isolated and felt more unhappy as a direct result of their use of virtual contact," he said. "We need to have disaster preparedness," he said. "We need to equip older people with the digital capacity to be able to use technology for the next time a disaster like this comes around." Hu added: "Policymakers and practitioners need to take measures to pre-empt and mitigate the potential unintended implications of household-centerd pandemic responses for mental wellbeing."
The problem [said Dr Yang Hu of Lancaster University, who co-wrote the report, published on Monday in Frontiers in Sociology] was that older people unfamiliar with technology found it stressful to learn how to use it. But even those who were familiar with technology often found the extensive use of the medium over lockdown so stressful that it was more damaging to their mental health than simply coping with isolation and loneliness. "Extensive exposure to digital means of communication can also cause burnout. The results are very consistent," said Hu, who collected data from 5,148 people aged 60 or over in the UK and 1,391 in the US -- both before and during the pandemic. "It's not only loneliness that was made worse by virtual contact, but general mental health: these people were more depressed, more isolated and felt more unhappy as a direct result of their use of virtual contact," he said. "We need to have disaster preparedness," he said. "We need to equip older people with the digital capacity to be able to use technology for the next time a disaster like this comes around." Hu added: "Policymakers and practitioners need to take measures to pre-empt and mitigate the potential unintended implications of household-centerd pandemic responses for mental wellbeing."
Reach out and grab someone. (Score:2, Funny)
Nowhere in there is the uplifting properties of teledildonics.
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New research (Score:4, Funny)
"Virtual contact during the pandemic made many over-60s feel lonelier and more depressed than no contact at all, new research has found."
Yeah, new research by people who never call their MOTHERS.
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Uh? But their mothers are dead.
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The researchers were studying elderly people - they weren't necessarily elderly themselves. :-D
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But you could have earned more Funny if you had said "on" instead of "by".
But I would projectively wager the researchers are old, too.
Um (Score:5, Insightful)
Why assume it's "oh, those old people, they don't know how to use technology"?
Maybe it's more "showing starving people food when they can't eat it doesn't help"?
Re:Um (Score:4, Interesting)
Wish I had mod points. I'm far from 60+ but I consistently felt sadder during lockdown after Skype/Zoom/Whatever conf calls than before the calls.
At some point one gets used to solitude. Days pass by, one read books, does daily things. Mood is not great, but it slowly improves, and a balance is found. Then one gets a video call and sees again the people one misses, and the craving for social interaction comes back, and the work of getting adjusted to solitude has to be redone again from the start.
I felt better when I stopped using video calls and reverted back to phone calls.
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... I consistently felt sadder during lockdown after Skype/Zoom/Whatever conf calls than before the calls.
I am not good at meetings, and online meetings are the worst kind. Meetings are boring when standing up face to face, with people waffling on about nothing much, when I want to get back some proper work, and online meetings do not imopove this. I am not sure about being sadder during lockdown. I find it has stimulated my comic writing. Mind you, I have to be careful. My friend was concerned that I was about to make an armed raid of the local supermarket, whereas all I intended was to frighten people a bit,
Re: Um (Score:5, Interesting)
But I think you proved the point of the study. Video conf and text weren't things you grew up with. Thus you don't consider it a fulfilling or possibly a proper form of social interaction between close relationships. And certainly not a replacement for physical proximity.
My grandmother felt the same about phone calls. She just couldn't understand why everyone wanted to live more than 2 hrs drive distance. It infuriated her that everyone called her just to tell her they would be over for the weekend. If we didn't live so far, they would already be here to pick us, the kids, up.
She grew up where all the cousins basically lived at each other's houses. And everything was all walking distance. When we were visiting, it's wasn't unusual for her to send us on errands to pick up stuff at the local store. Everyone in that small town knew who these 5-10 year olds were.
Re: Um (Score:2)
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Why are you writing that ZiggyZiggyZig? I have the impression you misunderstood because I don't get how what you wrote is relevant.
Correction: Re: Um (Score:2)
"Why are you writing that ZiggyZiggyZig"
Why are you writing that **to** ZiggyZiggyZig?
Re:Um (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because people born in the 1950's absolutely did not spend their teen years learning BASIC, as BASIC did not exist until 1958?
WTF?
My Mum (b 1926) wrote Fortran in the 1960's and was an Apple user from Apple ][ til she died age 93.
HOWEVER: If you want to make your device more friendly to older people:
Ditch the fucking Icons and use words, you fucking half-wits
For older people, it typically takes 3 months to learn to recognise the icon which replaced the one they were expecting, by which time Google have replaced it with an even less intuitive one.
Re:Um (Score:4, Insightful)
oh, those old people, they don't know how to use technology
No, because people born in the 1950's absolutely did not spend their teen years learning BASIC, as BASIC did not exist until 1958?
WTF?
My Mum (b 1926) wrote Fortran in the 1960's and was an Apple user from Apple ][ til she died age 93.
I can't help but think that this study made some real assumptions and leaps. One seems to be that older people are all technophobes. Here's a bit of an alternative assessment.
I deal with a group of people, almost all highly technical, and most are over 65. Most think that Zoom is a Godsend, allowing us to do our meetings at least getting our work done. Not perfect, not bad. We do have one person - the oldest member of the group, who while a technical person, is slowing down, and seems to be showing signs of increasing unhappiness. But as we resume in person meetings, he doesn't seem any happier.
Point is, many older people, if they are starting cognitive decline, might display unhappiness. The researchers should look into how their mood changes when ending the social isolation.
HOWEVER: If you want to make your device more friendly to older people:
Ditch the fucking Icons and use words, you fucking half-wits
For older people, it typically takes 3 months to learn to recognise the icon which replaced the one they were expecting, by which time Google have replaced it with an even less intuitive one.
I can vouch for that. When apple changed their calculator icon some years back, for some reason I still have to search for it now.
Re:Um (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to make your device more friendly to older people: Ditch the fucking Icons and use words, you fucking half-wits
This. More importantly, stop re-arranging everything every year or two, because some idiot UIX designer wants to leave his/her mark on the product. It's a tired analogy, but a true one: imagine you get in your car tomorrow, only to discover that it was updated. Steering is now by joystick, instead of a gas pedal you have a motorcycle throttle, etc..
For software, it's no different. Just this week, my mail program (K9 mail) had a major GUI update. Instead of a refresh icon, you now have to swipe down. Lots of other changes. Maybe they're even for the better, who knows? The point is, a program I use multiple times/day, every day, suddenly works completely differently, without any consent or acceptance by me - it's just dictated by the developers.
When I was younger, this stuff didn't bother me, at least, not as much. Nowadays, it is just annoying. I have better things to do than adapt to the latest brainwave of every UIX developer who touches some piece of software that I use regularly.
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... stop re-arranging everything every year or two, because some idiot UIX designer wants to leave his/her mark on the product.
I agree with that, but sometimes the old UI is actually crap, and it is worth the pain to improve it. If UI were never changed, for fear of upsetting existing users, then I don't think I would be able to run a computer, because we would all be writing in machine code. UI designers justifying their jobs by pointless tinkering is a management problem, related to measuring productivity. In my own software work, I am pleased when an effective refactoring results in negative lines of code output, because I have got rid of loads of crap.
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... stop re-arranging everything every year or two, because some idiot UIX designer wants to leave his/her mark on the product.
I agree with that, but sometimes the old UI is actually crap, and it is worth the pain to improve it.
Then write a new app. Making small changes is fine. Adding features is probably fine. Dramatically shifting the way an app works so that people have to relearn how to do common tasks is not.
Even better, bifurcate the UI. Create new classes for your new UI, then make it so users can easily toggle between the old UI and the new UI. Freeze the old UI code, and don't touch it again. Your UI code is properly abstracted from the business logic and data model, right?
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Then write a new app. Making small changes is fine. Adding features is probably fine. Dramatically shifting the way an app works so that people have to relearn how to do common tasks is not.
I don't know where you draw the line there, between acceptable small changes, and unacceptable dramatic changes. It is not practical to set an interface in concrete when an application is first released. You have to be able to make improvements. Some of those improvements might cause upheaval to customary work habits. But that need not be as big an upheaval as dumping the old app for a new one. I think UI designers often get the wrong idea about what needs to be improved, which results in pointless annoyance for users. But not all UI changes are pointless.
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Re: Um (Score:2)
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It's also a lot ,more helpful when attempting tech support. OK, now, click the icon that looks like a squished junebug, not the one that looks like the dog got sick...
Re:Um (I learned BASIC in the 60's.) (Score:2)
I call bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternative title: "Elders with active social lives felt lonely when their social activities ran into a brick wall". Well, duh.
Then on top of that, they had to deal with new technology, Zoom servers falling over like they were hosted on Office348, etc.
Meanwhile, those who had minimal interaction with others in the first place barely noticed and cared far less.
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It's been aggravated. Social stratification, especially the insistence that their social communities be entirely "safe spaces" for whatever content they don't wish to hear contradicted, is a notable issue right now. It's reinforcing strong segregation by race, class, gender, religion, and politics.
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Maybe lacking real time contacts (Score:1)
They were forced to watch Fox News, and use BookFace as their other source of news and companionship.
I know that would make me depressed.
I wonder... (Score:1)
It's almost like letting people do what they want once they know the information, instead of assuming everyone other than you is an idiot, is a start.
If my Grandma is going to die from loneliness, then her taking a 1% chance of getting sick around other people that have no symptoms might not be the dumbest idea.
And don't assume my Grandma can't reason for herself.
Obligatory SNL skit (Score:2)
Obligatory SNL skit from April 2020 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
More likely they don't want to talk to you. (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone assumes old people are sitting in a dark room waiting for the grandkids to call. Nope.
Virtual contact is worse because it has all the bad stuff with none of the good stuff. Kids, particularly young kids do NOT do virtual well. They do not have a long enough attention span. It's maybe 30 seconds of screen time with the grandkids, then they get bored and wander off while you are stuck talking to the young parents.
Virtual contact works best with people that you have a lot in common with. Inter-generational e-contact mostly consists of asking for help (both ways), bad news, boring news (people you don't know are sick/dying/married/pregnant), and talking about seeing you in real life.
These are the same people you fight with at Thanksgiving, contact should be limited with breaks. Can not do breaks over the internet.
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Virtual contact is worse because it has all the bad stuff with none of the good stuff. Kids, particularly young kids do NOT do virtual well. They do not have a long enough attention span. It's maybe 30 seconds of screen time with the grandkids, then they get bored and wander off while you are stuck talking to the young parents.
What does screen time have to do with it? I never had a conversation with my paternal grandparents in their entire lives, despite visiting those grandparents for up to a week every year during winter holidays.
I found out at my grandmother's funeral that it was because she hated my mother so much that she refused to acknowledge either me or my brother, and my grandfather went along to keep the peace in his own house. Our next youngest cousins, with a daughter-in-law my grandmother approved of, had a wonder
Re:More likely they don't want to talk to you. (Score:4, Insightful)
In my family grandparents didn't talk to their grandchildren much either, and we didn't expect to have a conversation with them beyond the usual "are you doing well in school". But we spent time together doing stuff, like harvesting fruit and vegetables, helping with preparing food, and small chores. They seemed happy that things were this way. I know my siblings and I were happy to go visit them on holidays. I think they would have hated using video calls, had they still been alive in 2020.
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I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as a kid. Mostly before school age, but also during too. When I guess my parents would dump me to go to the movies or something. They were always very nice to me, would read books to me, etc. Still I don't think I've had a real conversation until well into adulthood.
Unfortunately at this point only my grandfather is still around, but whenever we skype (since we live in different countries), we'll talk about business, career and other serious grown-up stuff. He does
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You should write his stories down, because those are a family treasure.
I know, my dad is 83, and he tells stories about visiting his grandparents on their two-horse farm during WW2.
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Yep, starting the last couple of visits, I've been recording videos of the stories in a documentary "talking head" style. It's a bit awkward since I had a camera, mics, and lights, but I think it's definitely worth it too.
Otherwise all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain, and all that :)
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Again, sorry you didn't have that.
Re: More likely they don't want to talk to you. (Score:2)
The best advice I could give is to get out and then make an audio call. No distractions of home, perhaps just walk in a quiet spot. You get exercise and relaxation. Your older relative of friend gets a more engaged version of you not thinking about what you need to do after the call.
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So... they're unhappy that they can't force their grandkids to sit through their boring stories that go on forever that nobody wants to hear but they love to tell?
Yeah, I can see that. But I fail to see the downside to it.
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Depends on the CONTENT (Score:5, Insightful)
"Extensive exposure to digital means of communication can also cause burnout. The results are very consistent"
Really? What "results" would those be? Anyone study the quality of content on "social" media over the last 18 months? Yeah, it became a fucking cesspool of political shit, and still is.
Wouldn't have mattered if COVID didn't exist; lock anyone in a room and expose them to that cesspool for extended periods of time, and yeah, you're gonna get depressed.
Internet addiction is so consistent throughout society that no one even sees an addiction problem.
No one.
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Depression is a mood disorder, not an "exposure to icky content" disorder. You can do nothing but look at pictures of people's food and vacations and still come away with a depressed mood. Even all kittens all the time will leave pe
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It's not what you find there. I haven't seen any evidence showing that what you see/talk about on social media is relevant to the overall levels of loneliness and depression it creates, just that it seems every age cohort exposed to it reports more loneliness and depression.
Uh, the latter part of your statement tends to prove the former part of your statement, false. Every age exposed to said source, reports more lonliness and depression, but there's nothing to see here? That's like finding a 3-pack a day smoker coughing more and more in the morning, but is in denial about the cigarettes being the cause.
Depression is a mood disorder, not an "exposure to icky content" disorder. You can do nothing but look at pictures of people's food and vacations and still come away with a depressed mood. Even all kittens all the time will leave people feeling lonely. Hell, I'd expect that any interactions that aren't in-person can make people feel lonelier as they throw into sharp relief the fact that you are alone in a room with a glowing box.
Rampant narcissism and the ability to deceive online are two main reasons the average person feels depressed about online content. Everyone seems to be having a great time i
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It seems our disagreement, which I don't think is necessary, arises because you're looking at specific types of content and how they could drive the aforementioned negative feelings, whereas I'm saying any content will produc
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You're right, we are quite aligned here, and I appreciate your insight as to your point, which you are 100% correct. In many ways consuming content online in any form, can be essentially "different" than the real world interaction, and creates that "junk food" feedback loop. The more you eat the more you crave. And much like the chemicals in fast food, it is that way by design. After all, when it comes to social media, the consumer is the product they're selling. More specifically, they're selling predi
In other words (Score:1)
Social media and video conferencing are a poor approximation of real human contacts. What a shocker that is...
You keep hearing about depressed teens with an overactive social media life: they have many "contacts", yet they're depressed. It's not new, and it's not limited to the over 60.
My prediction is, when the pandemic is over, people will go out and congregate like never before. And people will finally see social media for what it really is: a fake soul-crushing simulation of humanity that they had to en
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> And people will finally see social media for what it really is: a fake soul-crushing simulation of humanity that they had to endure during the pandemic, but nobody really want in normal times.
No, this will not happen: Social media is designed to give you dopamine shots from interacting. And it is available at a click. Real life can't chemically beat that.
Some might take the opportunity to have more real life, but social media will keep being the norm, along with all the consequences.
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> And people will finally see social media for what it really is: a fake soul-crushing simulation of humanity that they had to endure during the pandemic, but nobody really want in normal times.
No, this will not happen: Social media is designed to give you dopamine shots from interacting. And it is available at a click. Real life can't chemically beat that.
Except that Dopamine takes more and more to get that buzz. Then the person gets stuck in hate mode, and there is a real tendency to ragepost. I've seen normal people go down that hellhole. People do find better ways to waste their time.
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Social media and video conferencing are a poor approximation of real human contacts. What a shocker that is...
Social media is certainly a world of shit.
But video conferencing can be a great way of working. I had taught some classes via zoom that ended up being better than old school in person meetings. Some of the things like group and private chat, screen sharing and talking people through their issues allowed us to produce a new crop of proficient software users quickly during lockdown. In an RF/radio environment, we taught people to not only use the needed software, but even showed them how their signals look
There's a reason (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's also hard watching ignorant humans assume "Democrats" is the answer.
Put down your fucking pom poms cheerleader, and realize ALL of US Politics is the distraction to keep you entertained as Greed N. Corruption financially rapes the masses while Representing the Donor Class, NOT you, pleb.
Yeah, it became a fucking cesspool of political shit, and still is.
Except that political cesspool needs fixing or it’s loss of all rights and legal enslavement by the ruling class set in law not just stochastically under the table. Anyone not at least willing and trying to fix the political problems in good conscience deserves to be a slave for the rest of their lives, anyone actively enabling this deserves prolonged grave physical injury followed by a slow death preferably as they watch every thing they ever worked for burned down in front of their wan fading visi
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[...] deserves to be a slave for the rest of their lives [...] deserves prolonged grave physical injury followed by a slow death preferably as they watch every thing they ever worked for burned down in front of their wan fading vision"
I'm supposing that for an advanced species like us treating each other in that way is at least in part more of a reflection of what's going wrong than in part a method of what can make things get better.
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It's also hard watching ignorant humans assume "Democrats" is the answer.
Put down your fucking pom poms cheerleader, and realize ALL of US Politics is the distraction to keep you entertained as Greed N. Corruption financially rapes the masses while Representing the Donor Class, NOT you, pleb.
Yeah, it became a fucking cesspool of political shit, and still is.
Except that political cesspool needs fixing...
Political salesmen and women have been pimping the notion that they will be THE one to come in and "fix" the cesspool, if you just vote for them. That this time, will be "different". Just give more money. You still don't get it, and you're still falling for their game of distraction, cheering on for a "winner". Neither party has "fixing" as a real goal, that is merely a sales tactic to maintain that corrupt engine of mass distraction.
By the time ignorant citizens wake up to realize what a two-party sys
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The major difference between the Dems and Republicans right now is that the Republicans are demonstrating their ability to be comfortable with lies and hypocrisy. To be Republican right now you have a too literarily assent to the "big lie".
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The major difference between the Dems and Republicans right now is that the Republicans are demonstrating their ability to be comfortable with lies and hypocrisy. To be Republican right now you have a too literarily assent to the "big lie".
There is no difference between a Representative of the Donor Class, and a Representative of the Donor Class.
The only major difference today, is there are THAT many more stupid citizen cheerleaders still falling for a two-party system, believing if their "side" could just "win", all would be better.
American politics has become a machine of mass distraction for Greed N. Corruption to get away with political murder on the taxpayer dime. Sorry, but you're an idiot if you still believe otherwise.
Get used to it (Score:2)
I spent my life like this, I started to even like it. Get used to it. It ain't that bad, after a while, you're happy when you don't have to interface with humans any more than absolutely necessary.
Contradictions (Score:2)
[QUOTE]It's not only loneliness that was made worse by virtual contact, but general mental health[/QUOTE]
Also
[QUOTE]We need to equip older people with the digital capacity to be able to use technology for the next time a disaster like this comes around.[/QUOTE]
What? Technology made old people lonelier, so we need to train them to better use technology?
This is like saying old people with limited mobility find icy ground dangerous, so we should teach them to ice skate.
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The reason it is worse for "over 60" is that we haven't been indoctrinated with "digital is BETTER" for as much of our lives as the young folks.
To us, digital is a poor substitute for reality, not better.
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You know those billion studies linking social media use with loneliness and depression in teens? Well, it makes EVERYONE feel lonely and depressed. More of it won't help, less of it will.
Online chat is not conversation (Score:2)
People just chatting with each other face to face is very important to normal human life. Online applications attempt to imitate that, but fail totally in my opinion. I installed WhatsApp on my mobile. After a few days, it just got bloody annoying. It was nothing like the normal banter at work. People I considered to be quite clever and kindly looked like horrible nerdy twerps when online. I still keep in touch, but I don't pretend that online contact is a substitute for the real thing.
It's about the experience (Score:3, Insightful)
poet Elvira Sastre nails it (Score:2)
La soledad es mirar a unos ojos que no te miran.
(Loneliness is looking into eyes that are not looking at you.)
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So, the same as everyone else? (Score:2)
How can I say such an outrageous thing? Well, because pre-Covid nobody shut up about how social media was making kids feel lonely and depressed. It makes teenagers feel lonely and depressed. Is it somehow a surprise that something that makes EVERYONE feel lonely and depressed makes people over 60 feel lonely and depressed?