Jamil Zaki, an associate professor of psychology in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory, believes the same technologies that have been denounced for their negative impact on real-world social connectedness could now offer our best chance of staying together during the novelcoronavirus outbreak.

Social distancing – described as voluntarily limiting physical contact with other people – has been a key strategy by governments across the world in helping limit the spread of COVID-19. But, warns Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki, it’s important that people remain connected to avoid harming their mental and physical health in the long term.

In a Q&A interview posted on the University’s website, Zaki explores strategies to stay connected, starting with the reframing of “social distancing” to “physical distancing” to highlight how people can remain together even while being apart.

Zaki’s research examines how empathy works and how people can learn to empathise more effectively. 

Asked about some of the psychological impacts that come with social distancing and sheltering-in-place, he says: “Experiments show that the support of loved ones softens our response to stress and even our brains’ response to painful electric shocks. By contrast, loneliness is psychologically poisonous; it increases sleeplessness, depression, as well as immune and cardiovascular problems. In fact, chronic loneliness produces a similar mortality risk to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”

So how can loneliness be prevented? His answer is to reframe social distancing as “physical distancing” or “distant socialising” to underline how we can remain socially connected even while being apart. 

Describing some of the coping strategies when feeling lonely, Zaki points to FaceTime, Zoom and other online tools. 

“We know to use these tools for meetings and teaching but why stop there?” he says. “In my opinion, we should also use them for much less formal interactions – digital hanging out.”

He describes how his lab features a coffee room where people congregate and take breaks together. They created a Zoom channel called “the coffee room” meant explicitly for doing nothing together. Other suggestions include cooking the same meal with someone on FaceTime and virtually clinking glasses, or arranging online playdates where kids can play the same games or draw from the same reference picture.

But, of course, not everyone has access to such tools? Indeed, the people who are most vulnerable to COVID-19, especially the elderly, are also most susceptible to the negative impact of human isolation and the least familiar with using digital technology that might help alleviate their sense of being alone. 

There are other ways to connect too, adds Zaki. “I’ve been moved by videos of Italians singing together from their balconies, a simple act of solidarity and togetherness that reminds us we’re in this moment together, even when apart.”

In addition, he warns about the need to stay positive and not get drawn into fear-inducing scenes and stories, such as those seen on the news of people fighting each other for toilet paper. He insists that the more common reality is the opposite. 

Following disasters, he says, people pour out of their homes to help one another, standing in line for hours to donate blood, sheltering and aiding strangers, and disregarding certain boundaries often adopted in normal times to assist those struggling. Searching Twitter for the hashtag #COVIDkindness will offer up many uplifting examples of people coming together to support one another. 

“One thing to remember, though, is that even the decision to socially distance is an act of kindness,” Zaki says. “Young, healthy people bear relatively low risk even if they catch COVID-19, which means that their decision to isolate themselves is a way of protecting more vulnerable members of their community. I think just this realisation can help. Even the decision to isolate is an act of solidarity – one we take alone, but also together.”

And understanding that, for some, work may not proceed apace, may help them lower expectations, and divert focus and energy on family, friends and community.