PRESSURE TO PARTY
How has lockdown affected our ability to socialise?
BY MARTHA O’BRIEN
I meet Beth in the shade of two trees in Heath Park. I haven’t seen her like this, out in public, for more than three months. Before lockdown, we would see each other most weeks - she’d come to my flat for a cup of tea or food, and we would talk for hours and hours, easily. It’s never tiring or difficult company.
‘Just know I’d be hugging you if I could,’ I tell her. ‘I’m hugging you in my mind.’
We sit either side of a big picnic mat, which makes it easier to keep at a two metre distance.
‘This is like Skype,’ Beth says, ‘but in 3D.’
It’s nice to catch up in person, after so long in lockdown. The long silences are comfortable, rather than awkward, and there’s no connection issues, no awkward interruptions, no freezing cameras. I’ve set the whole afternoon aside to catch up, knowing how long we’re usually sat chatting together. It’s weird to me, then, when I notice that it’s only been a couple of hours before I start to notice myself zoning out a bit - in a daze, chatting less. My ability to chat for as long as we used to seems to have gone out the window. I’ve been waiting to see Beth for months, and now we’re here, I’m too tired to even keep up with the conversation. I get home and lay in silence for a bit, sticking on mindless telly.
At the beginning of lockdown, I couldn’t wait for it to end - I still can’t, obviously, but at the beginning, the things I looked forward to most were the big parties, the nights at the pub, the return to the social normality I’d had before. And now, as lockdown eases, the floodgates are opening up; there are new opportunities to catch up with as many friends as possible, to get out and enjoy the little liberties that we’re allowed to so far. Except, almost three months after lockdown began, I’m pretty much happy to just sit in silence.
I think, like most of us, I worried about the effect lockdown would have on my little brain. When lockdown was announced, one of the things that concerned me most was that the opportunity for socialising would be gone; I’m almost definitely the biggest extrovert I know, and my need for the company of friends and family was something that made me worry about the toll lockdown would take on my mood. I found huge comfort in the first days and weeks of social distancing in Facebook Messenger, Skype and Zoom. It wasn’t the same sit-in-silent-company socialising that I love, but it was a good next-best-thing. In fact, I found myself calling and video chatting with far more people than I usually would - in some cases, with people I hadn’t spoken to for months.
Across social media there was heavy emphasis on the need to favour the term ‘physical distancing’ over ‘social distancing’. The latter implies staying away from people altogether, while the first one more accurately describes what’s actually going on. And while it’s only a good thing that checking up on each other has become part of daily routine, the use of social media to stay in contact began, in some ways, to show threat of feeling a little bit stifling.
It’s always been there: that moment your phone buzzes and you can’t be bothered to talk, to answer the text. Sometimes you just want to be left alone. So you ignore it, wait a few hours, come back when you’re ready, and reply: no questions asked. The friend that sent you the message, you hope, assumes you were out doing something, you were busy, and you’ve replied at your next convenient time.
Only, that excuse went out of the window. With everyone constantly aware that everyone is inside, apparently phone in hand, all the time, how was it possible to make the excuse that you can’t reply? And how could ever get time for yourself, when the normal rhythms of social life seemed to be impossible to return to? I suppose these questions are still lingering now, as I say my early goodbyes to Beth in the park - that line, ‘I’ve got plans, later’ doesn’t sound quite as convincing anymore.
I spoke to some students during lockdown about how connecting over social media made them feel.
‘Zoom calls take energy,’ said Milly, a postgraduate law student, chatting over messenger. ‘You have to plan ahead, choose a date and time the week before, pencil it in the diary. You eat dinner early, charge your laptop, set up the meeting and start the call.’
‘Unlike normal socialising, all your attention is in the conversation. You don’t have the distractions of a shared environment. You put all your energy into keeping the conversation going, filling the awkward silences, reading facial expressions and body language, seeing your own facial expressions and body language (which is wholly unnatural) and adjusting how you look accordingly. It can be exhausting, even when you’re chatting to your best friend.’
Katie, a Maths student on placement, noticed a similar trend in having to reflect on your appearance in a web call: ‘We use video calls for all of our weekly meetings, and most of the middle-aged and older people have their cameras on, but the young people don’t. It’s just speculation, but I think it’s because we’re more self-conscious of what we look like, whereas older people genuinely seem so carefree with it’.
A huge part of the social anxiety that comes with web chats does seem to revolve around needing to check our own appearance; it’s like hanging out in a room full of mirrors (except the mirrors are low-res and manage to make you look worse than ever).
But maybe the problem is that we’re all thinking this and not saying it out loud.
‘I think I’ve generally been slower to respond to messages during lockdown, and though I haven’t felt any backlash from my friends, I have definitely felt guilty for it,’ said Milly. ‘It feels as if we’re in a weird state of non-existence at the moment with all our responsibilities on pause, and so sometimes it’s easy to forget to do the little things too. I will read a message and because I don’t feel the usual need to immediately respond, I won’t, and then I completely forget about it until the next day when it hits me and I feel like an awful friend.’
‘Although at points I’ve become a much quicker replier, I feel like that comes with highs and lows of enthusiasm,’ Katie said. ‘But I don’t feel like I need to lie because I’ve always been such a bad replier, so I feel like people expect it of me - I can 100% see how people would feel the need to lie, though.’
It seems like open communication is the way forward. As much as we need to check up on one another, it’s important that part of those check-ins are asking our friends when they need time alone. Not all isolation is bad, and too much of others’ voices can begin to feel more claustrophobic than the house you’re stuck in.
Ultimately, the problem of having too many friends and too much time to socialise, amidst the backdrop of what’s at hand, is a small problem. Maybe that’s because the real problem is actually just not saying what we mean; if we actually just expressed that we want to be left alone (and sometimes, that we need to), we could have happier, more engaging, and less pressured interactions with one another.
It’s quite liberating to turn and yawn to Beth after a few hours in the park.
‘I’ve got to go home and clean my kitchen,’ I say. ‘Plus, I kind of just really want a lie down.’