Study: Virtual Interaction During COVID-19 Lockdowns Made the Elderly Feel Even More Isolated and Lonely
Shane Trejo
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A recent study has shown that virtual contact, such as Zoom or Skype calls, is making the elderly feel even more lonely and isolated amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tech giants such as Amazon and Facebook released cheery-eyed propaganda featuring smiling families connecting with each other through video chats during the pandemic. As usual, the monolithic corporations were peddling lies to the unsuspecting public, and some of the most vulnerable in society suffered more due to their products.
The report, published in the Frontiers in Sociology journal, has shown that many elderly people developed long-term mental health disorders and reported increases in loneliness from communicating through technology. They reported worse isolation than elderly people who endured the pandemic completely alone.
“We were surprised by the finding that an older person who had only virtual contact during lockdown experienced greater loneliness and negative mental health impacts than an older person who had no contact with other people at all,” said Dr. Yang Hu of Lancaster University, who co-wrote the report.
“We were expecting that a virtual contact was better than total isolation but that doesn’t seem to have been the case for older people,” he added.
Older people, who have not been atomized and conditioned to technological enslavement, find communicating through electronic devices to be demeaning and a cheap substitute for actual person-to-person interaction.
“Extensive exposure to digital means of communication can also cause burnout. The results are very consistent,” Hu said.
“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 added.
However, it is far from just elderly people who have been adversely affected due to the lockdowns. They have also waged a considerable toll on young people who are now contemplating suicide in record numbers, as Big League Politics has noted:
“New data from the Center for Disease Control indicates that more than 25% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 experienced suicidal thoughts in the month of June, an elevated statistic likely a result of the coronavirus epidemic.
11% of the Americans in that age category thought “seriously” about suicide, a large contingent of the demographic.
“Symptoms of anxiety disorder and depressive disorder increased considerably in the United States during April–June of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019,” the CDC reported on Thursday.
The data indicates that a massive 47% of Americans ages 18 to 29 experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression during the months of April and May. Rolling surveys indicate that rate is increasing, having crossed more than 50% in June.
The uptick of poor mental health is likely attributable to the ongoing coronavirus epidemic and the accompanying lockdown policies, which still keep everyday life, schooling, sports, and entertainment a thing of the past as the disease continues to spread.“
The COVID-19 lockdowns have damaged society irreparably. If the individuals responsible for these cruel and unnecessary policies are not held accountable, Western Civilization is dead.
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