Public square | Are we really deconfined?

Occasionally, Dialogue invites a personality to share their point of view on an issue or question that affects us all. Journalist and host Noémi Mercier is today interested in the consequences of confinement, still present four years after the start of the pandemic.

Noémi Mercier

Journalist and presenter, special collaboration

What we experienced for months was unnatural. Keeping a distance from loved ones, refusing their embraces, even in mourning. Looking at the people we passed in the street with a new coldness. Venturing into public places with the vigilance of a prison escapee, striving to avoid human contact. Learn to distrust others, to fear them, to turn your back on them.

Then, imperceptibly, we adapted. Forced hibernation has become (for the more privileged among us) almost cozy. As our social life contracted, our emotional muscles became numb and atrophied. And it seems like they never fully recovered.

Four years after the great lockdown and two years after the end of health restrictions, are we really out of lockdown?

One might have expected that the lifting of prohibitions would give free rein to a revival of sociability. Finally ! we would be reborn, make up for canceled parties, repair damaged friendships, and never again deprive ourselves of the joy of being together.

However, around the world, researchers who have examined the repercussions of the pandemic have found this surprising: we have not completely come out of our shell.

According to a compilation of 33 studies carried out in 11 countries on three continents, the crisis has had the effect of exacerbating social anxiety, as much among adults as among children and adolescents.^⁠1. Also called social phobia, this disorder is a kind of unhealthy shyness which is characterized by the fear of situations where we risk exposing ourselves to the gaze and judgment of others, with the consequence that we prefer to avoid them.

The deconfinement did not relieve this discomfort; he sometimes even made it livelier. After all these months spent sheltered from the world, many of us have had difficulty getting used to life in society again.

For example, work in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States has shown that social anxiety has increased, particularly among young adults, as health rules have eased.^⁠2. In Portugal, adolescents were more withdrawn in themselves After the reopening of schools (which were closed there for several months) than before the pandemic^⁠3.

Of course, the trend towards social withdrawal was already well underway in our societies before COVID-19 reinforced it.^⁠4. But some specialists are convinced that we are today dealing with a form of withdrawal specific to post-COVID.

A duo of psychology professors (an Italian and an American) even coined a new term to describe the phenomenon: “pandemic disengagement syndrome,” a cluster of symptoms that combine social avoidance and a feeling of alienation.

These “disengaged” people are uncomfortable in public places, they shy away from crowds and in-person interactions, preferring virtual exchanges and the comfort of home.

But it’s not just physically that they keep their distance. It is internally that they have withdrawn, from their loved ones, from their projects, from daily life. They say they are paralyzed, demotivated; they no longer want to see their friends or family as much as before, they feel far away from them, disconnected; They wonder if they will ever be able to rebuild their relationships.

After studying different population areas, in the United States, Italy, Norway and Sweden, the researchers affirm, in their article published in the journal Psychological Assessment^⁠5that this vagueness in the soul could persist in some of us well beyond the acute phases of the pandemic.

Perhaps we underestimated how much the virus has changed us.

Like a joint left in a cast for a long time, which cracks and jams when it starts moving again, our social skills have lacked training during these long months of deprivation. And we are seeing the consequences today.

It’s more complicated to be around each other in public spaces, the impatience of some rubbing up against the irritability of others in this period when incivility has become a scourge.

As part of another study^⁠6, conducted among 7,000 American adults, researchers also measured generalized personality changes in the aftermath of COVID-19. They tested their subjects before the health crisis, then during its first months, and again a year or two later. And they discovered that certain character traits – those that normally change little during adult life – had fluctuated from their pre-pandemic level. Extroversion, openness, agreeableness as well as conscientiousness (being organized, disciplined, responsible) are said to be in decline since the pandemic.

Have you noticed ? These are all virtues that, to varying degrees, are necessary to maintain harmony in society.

If it is true that we have become less conscientious and therefore less willing, for example, to comply with standards of good manners; that we are now less cooperative and benevolent towards others, less fond of their company; that we are less open to the ideas of those who think differently from us… It is perhaps normal that we have more difficulty putting up with each other! Even if the pandemic sometimes seems very distant, we still have not finished learning to live together again.

1. Check out the study by researchers at Swinburne University of Technology

2. Consult the study carried out by Australian, British and American researchers (in English)

3. Consult the study carried out by Portuguese researchers (in English)

4. Statistics Canada has, for example, measured that the prevalence of social phobia has more than doubled in 20 years in the country; it has even quadrupled among young women aged 15 to 24.

5. Consult the study carried out by Italian and American researchers (in English

6. Consult the study carried out by American and French researchers (in English)

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