When loneliness was a moral duty: 'My friends were untouchable, masked'

Mary Frances Ruskell was in seventh grade in the spring of 2020, when schools closed, she writes in her college application essay. Her school reopened in fall. But social distancing rules made it "a moral duty to be lonely," she writes.

In eighth grade, "we sat alone in assigned spots, two kids on opposite ends of a 6-foot-long (nearly 2-meter-long) picnic table to maximize the distance between us."

"That first Covid year was filled with mindfulness exercises in homeroom, encouragement to do yoga, meditate, reflect and journal in the morning announcements, " she writes. Students were told they had the power to improve themselves and their life. But, "how you know if you’re changing for the better if you have little input from peers, if you have no friends around in real life to sort out new ideas, new identities, new interests?

Adolescents need to "pull away from our parents" and learn to become more autonomous, she writes. "Friends are there to fall some of the gaps, helping each other grow into new, more independent people."

Unless they're not. It was worse for kids who were homebound for months, Ruskell writes. She was luckier than most.

She was "ecstatic" to skip the last months of seventh grade. It was a respite from "the throes of puberty."

"My friends and I still talked through texting and group chats," though it wasn't the same as in-person conversations.

Her school reopened for eighth grade.

At school, my friends were right there in front of me but untouchable and unreachable. Our desks were far apart, and we were all masked. You couldn’t whisper to your friends anymore. You could barely talk, except during a short recess. Even then, we had to be masked and stand far apart. It was hard to read expressions, hear inflections. . . .

. . . There were reminders plastered everywhere to stay 6 feet apart. We were told we were “protecting each other” if we stayed away from other people, that we were empathetic, caring and good members of society.

If someone was seen hanging out with people, close and maskless, they must be a bad person. . . . To feel intense guilt for a basic, once-accepted human desire for companionship hurt. Staying away from people became celebrated, a moral good.

Young Americans (18-29 years old) became more socially isolated and more likely to report depressive symptoms, according to a March 2025 poll from Harvard's Institute of Politics, notes Ruskell. "Fewer than half of all surveyed said they felt a sense of community in their current life."

Connecting with other people is the secret to happiness, writes Susan Dominus in the New York Times Magazine.

People in strong marriages and those with strong family relationships are the happiest. That makes sense. But, even small, fleeting connections with others make people happier,

Happiness "interventions, such as expressing gratitude and doing an act of kindness, make people feel more connected, researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky tells Dominus. “If someone were to ask me what’s the one thing you could do tomorrow to be happier, that’s my answer: having a conversation with someone — or a deeper conversation than you normally do.”

"Talking to strangers — on trains, in a coffee shop, at the playground, on line at the D.M.V., in the waiting room at the doctor’s office — could . . . be seen as a moving reflection of how eager we all are, every day, to connect with other humans whose interiority would otherwise be a mystery, individuals in whose faces we might otherwise read threat, judgment, boredom or diffidence," writes Dominus.

I've always liked talking to people in lines, sharing a moment, appreciating that we're all in this together. (And I tend to be a happy person.) But it's harder nowadays when so many people are staring at their phones.