I’ve seen numerous comments like this from social scientists this year, and I have to say, there’s definitely something to it.

““I get tons of people asking me what we can do during the pandemic to try to stay connected and stave off loneliness,” said BYU psychology professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad, who co-led the project. “Conducting this experiment during pandemic conditions—which we didn’t originally plan—we found that people can experience significant reductions in loneliness even in tough times just by doing things that are easy, free and require no training to help the people around them.””