How is the Internet Impacting Relationships and Human Connections in COVID-19?

A. R. Leucadia
2 min readNov 2, 2020

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Photo by tabitha turner on Unsplash

COVID-19 has heightened individuals’ digital use. Social distancing guidelines have allowed users to experiment with new ways to socialize with peers, co-workers, and family members. Connecting through a screen is more of a norm than ever before, as eliminating face-to-face contact is required to avoid the spread of the virus. Technology was not something that was unknown to society before this moment, yet we are needing it more than ever to stay sane.

Zoom meetings, social media, and virtual events are just a few ways that individuals have been interacting with others throughout the pandemic (Marr, 2020). Schools across the United States have also partaken in remote learning, pushing teachers to quickly advance their technological usage and teach their students in virtual classrooms. The internet is really acting as the middle-man to all of our relationships. From peer to peer, teacher to student, co-worker to co-worker, our human connections would be far less frequent without it. It seems that we are now relying on viewing the content that others are posting, just to feel like we are belonging somewhere (Tiffany, 2020). In some way, the internet and digital devices are modes to combat loneliness.

We can even see this idea being applied with dating. Instead of attending in-person dates, more individuals are turning to dating apps to fill their quarantine loneliness. In fact, between March 13, 2020 and March 27, 2020, Bumble had a 93% function spike with more users taking advantage of video calling (Brown, 2020). FaceTime/Zoom dates are now being chosen over heading to a local coffee shop. People still want to find love and keep their lives moving; dating apps are the optimal choice (Kats, 2020). Though still online, these apps are really serving the companionship needs that individuals are craving at this moment.

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