Connected Despite Lockdown: The Role of Social Interactions and Social Media Use in Wellbeing

Humans are social beings, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world were periodically in lockdown and were required to try to physically distance themselves from others. The resultant limitation of face-to-face interactions presented a challenge to wellbeing. During periods of lockdown, people could, however, still connect to others via technology, but it is unknown whether such interactions offer benefits comparable to face-to-face interactions. In the present study, we examined how different ways of interacting with others impacted wellbeing during a period of lockdown in the United Kingdom. In a 30-day diary study conducted in April-June 2020, 110 adults reported the time they spent daily on face-to-face interactions and technology-mediated communication (video, phone, text) with different interaction partners. They also indicated the time they spent on active and passive social media use and their end-of-day wellbeing. Multilevel regressions indicated that more face-to-face interactions both within and outside of one’s household positively predicted wellbeing, while technology-mediated communication had less consistent positive effects. Additionally, more active and less passive social media use predicted better wellbeing. These results highlight the complexity of benefits of different kinds of social interactions during lockdowns in the COVID-19 pandemic and point to the importance of taking into account communication channels, interaction partners, and how people use social media when studying the effects of connecting to others.