It almost feels wrong to complain about the lack of a social life during a time when families can barely put together a meal on the table and many are struggling in the face of income loss and inflation. However, one cannot deny that our social lives and ability to go out, meet our friends and relax is in some way tied to our mental health and quality of life.
In many ways, the Covid-19 pandemic prepared us for prolonged periods of not meeting our friends. Going out came with several risks, which were heightened if you lived with elderly or sick relatives. Many of us also reduced contact with certain friends and cut some off altogether, if we felt they were not being careful enough and were thus putting us at risk as well.
Restaurants were closed and lockdowns and other safety measures often kept us indoors.
However, health officials promised that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. If we wore our masks, got vaccinated, and contained the spread of Covid-19, we would soon be able to go back to pre-pandemic times, or a version of it known as the “new normal”.
Cut to 2022, and we find ourselves in the middle of an economic crisis, where fuel shortages severely limit outings, and even when cabs and tuks are available, the prices are so high, that coupled with the cost of food and drinks, you find yourself hesitant to spend so much money in a single day.
Again, there is some guilt associated with complaining about not being able to go out and have fun. However, as people have pointed out, many of us worked hard to climb a rung or two up the corporate ladder to enjoy certain comforts and luxuries. A good social life is one of them.
When asked what their social life is like at present, one person quipped: “What’s a social life? Is it a type of yoga pose?”
Vishan shared that he can’t afford to go anywhere, and can’t bring anyone home because of his parents. With rising Covid-19 numbers, there are health concerns as well when inviting friends over, in addition to food delivery not being the convenient option it once was.
Sunela said she has no social life, and added: “I have become a hermit thanks to the pandemic.”
Meanwhile, Chamod said: “I have cut down travelling to only getting essentials for the house.”
To Risla, a semblance of a social life remains because she chooses to walk everywhere, whether it was to protest, enjoy coffee at a café, or visit friends at their houses. While nightlife is not an option, Risla said this has made her “learn to take life the slow way, trust my feet and walk. We have so much to talk about these days. At least I’m saving money on transport”.
The need for human touch
Prof. Dunbar, in a 2022 study titled “Virtual touch and the human social world”, stated that touch is a central component of social bonding via the brain’s endorphin system. He explains that in primates, this involves social grooming. “Although humans still use soft touch for bonding relationships, they have had to find ways of triggering the endorphin system without the need for physical touch in order to be able to increase the size of their social groups beyond the size of those characteristic of monkeys and apes.”
He lists behaviours like laughter, singing, dancing, rituals of religion, feasting, and emotional storytelling, adding that they act as a form of “virtual touch”.
The study found that haptic (relating to or based on the sense of touch) stimulation of endorphin acts to bond relationships in primates and humans, and that virtual touch allows humans to groom at a distance with more individuals.
If you consider what you get from an evening or night out with friends, you can identify behaviours like laughter, storytelling, singing, and dancing. These behaviours strengthen our relationships with each other, and an absence of them can make friendships harder to maintain.
This is perhaps why we feel the need for the physical presence of a friend and feel like we haven’t seen them in ages, even if we regularly interact with them on social media.
In a 2020 article published by BBC, Victoria Gill quoted psychologist Prof. Robin Dunbar as saying: “Friendships can deteriorate very quickly if you don’t invest in them – it probably only takes about three months.”
Investing in relationships
Prof. Dunbar also talks about a fizzling out of friendships, known as relationship funnelling, where we will prioritise and even strengthen some friendships through care and increased communication, but let other, more marginal relationships or connections fizzle out. This affects older persons in particular, as they find it more difficult to make new friends.
“And the biggest single factor affecting health, wellbeing, happiness – even the ability to survive surgery or illness – is the number of high-quality friendships you have,” Prof. Dunbar says.
With the Covid-19 lockdown and now the economic crisis, it can feel like we are not investing in our friendships. Meeting friends is almost impossible unless you live in close proximity to each other, but there is also a distance created by the lack of conversation topics, since all we can do is complain about the price of food, the lack of fuel, or the political instability in the country.
Unlike during the pandemic lockdowns, however, virtual meetups are difficult now as well, due to conflicting work and power interruption schedules. There is also a sense of virtual meetups not being enough – or rather, a certain frustration and tiredness of having to communicate through screens during the respite we get between Covid-19 waves.
According to psychologist Dr. Jenny Groarke, there is a link between lower satisfaction with the quality of digital social contact and higher loneliness.
“People are using digital modes of communication to meet their social needs, but they’re less satisfied with the quality of this form relative to face-to-face contact,” she explains.
So perhaps that sense of urgency we feel to meet our friends and spend time with them in a physical setting stems from a place of loneliness that even we haven’t really had the time to identify or think about. And even if we have, it is likely that we feel guilty about wanting to enjoy life when so many are suffering and also feel ungrateful that what we do have in terms of friendship during these times is not sufficient.
However, it is also important to keep in mind that we are social creatures, and as such it is only natural that we want to be around our friends. It is also said that these interpersonal bonds are crucial for our development and wellbeing in society.
This is also our way of responding to a very human need for physical contact, as Dr. Groarke says: “People (in our surveys) also spoke about missing physical touch, and finding it ‘bizarre’ and ‘not normal’ to go so long without touching people.”
