Loneliness

This backgrounder is intended to provide context for Cardus’s focus on loneliness and social isolation. Cardus research is intended not only to raise awareness and provide insight into a particular area of public life, but also to stimulate action and behavioural changes that have a positive impact on social flourishing.

Imagine Canada like a car: we’ve just had the rare experience of smashing our economy, culture, and society into a brick wall at high speed—whether through the disease itself or our response to it. And like crash-test engineers, we now have to perform the analysis. What did we learn? How did we fare? What performed better than expected, and what worse? And, most importantly, where do we go from here?

Building community has not been easy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gathering restrictions have been difficult enough for those with strong relationships, but for those who were already struggling to develop meaningful connections, the added challenges of physical distancing requirements and stay-at-home orders have simply added to their social isolation.