Evidence base
Scientific Reports
Understanding the Interplay Between Social Isolation, Age, and Loneliness During the COVID-19 Pandemic
What it found
This study examines how objective social isolation and subjective loneliness relate to one another during the COVID-19 pandemic, and shows that this relationship shifts across age groups rather than holding as a fixed pattern. The findings support treating isolation and loneliness as distinct constructs rather than interchangeable proxies for one another.
Why it matters for practice
Programmes that measure only isolation (contact frequency) or only loneliness (subjective scales) risk missing the group for whom the two diverge, and this paper gives an age-stratified basis for arguing that both need separate measurement and separate intervention design.