Together in a time of physical distancing

Abstract

Could there be a stranger time for a book about social connections than during a period when we have seen the most dramatic global effort ever to keep people away from one another? In the first half of 2020, the world was in the grip of fear about the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries instituted some form of physical distancing for their whole populations to mitigate the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Emerging data from this period showed that reports of loneliness and attendant depression and anxiety increased compared with 2019.