The changing landscape of friendship in the pandemic: Males, younger people, and less educated people experience more negative effects of the pandemic on their friendships
Friendships are important for social support and mental health, yet social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic have limited people’s ability to interact with their friends during this difficult time. In August of 2020, we asked participants about changes in their friendships as a result of the pandemic - including changes in the quality of friendships and people’s feelings about their friends - as part of a larger longitudinal study. We found that people who are younger, male, and less educated reported more negative effects on their friendships as a result of the pandemic, including feeling lonelier and less satisfied with their friends, while people with higher subjective socioeconomic status (SES) wanted to make more and shallower friends than those with lower subjective SES. We also found that feelings of stress, isolation and guilt around friendship are associated with greater COVID-related social risk taking, such as being motivated to make new friends and visit friends in person. Males, who reported more negative effects of the pandemic on their friendship than females, also reported a greater likelihood than females that they would attend large parties. These results show that the pandemic is affecting friendships differently across demographic groups and suggest that the negative impacts of COVID-19 on friendships might motivate some COVID-related social risk taking in order to try to maintain friendships or build new ones.