Social Isolation in Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic

I had either the advantage or disadvantage of having a lot of kids while in covid lockdown, so they were never particularly 'lonely', though they did miss friends (And many more argument opportunities were opened by them all being around each other constantly). We have never allowed much electronic time in our home, but we began scheduling 'video call time', in which our kids would be allowed to call friends. For the older ones, we let them talk about whatever they wanted, for the younger ones we planned games they could play with their friends either over the video call or online- they figured out how to play battleship both over a video call and online, and found a few other free online games, and I finally caved and allowed them to download Roblox with very strict childlocks and supervision on who they were adding as friends.

I think the thing I noticed the most was large changes to behaviors. Though the video calls were exciting to the kids at first, I found that after a while a few of them (in different age ranges, as well) found themselves in a rather lazy mindset caused by emotions brought about by not being able to play with their friends. Ie, 'I want to play with Sarah, but I can't, so I just want to sit here and think about how much I miss her, instead'.

I also found the youngest of my children became very weary around strangers. I have four children under the age of 5, and they were living in a world where they remembered nothing [i]but[/i] covid. So they had no idea how to ask someone to play, or how to incite conversation or a game with another child. It made them more shy, and made it so that I had to step in and guide social interactions far more than I had needed to for their siblings who remembered a world pre-covid. For my then 2-3 year old, she began using her covid mask the same way some kids use a security stuffed animal- she would always want it outside of the house, and sometimes even wore it inside, just for fun. That may have been largely based on the fact that my husband works at a hospital, though, and at the height of covid, had to stay there overnight for weeks at a time to avoid bringing it home, when he had two newborns, his elderly mother, and two at-risk children at home. In her mind, she seemed to associate wearing a mask with visiting her father, and would ask for her mask anytime we got into the car followed with "Go see daddy?"

I will say that I noticed differences based on personality, though. My kids who tend to be more creative and artsy found ways around the boredom- they scheduled socially distant things without promoting with their friend groups. One had a virtual 'dance club', where the kids would all separately learn a dance, with video call practices in between, and then they would perform it separately and merge the video together to make it so they were all on the same screen. There was a virtual book club for a while, a Bible study group, a 'rock art' group (where they would separately paint and hide rocks in the neighborhood, and sign their name son the back, so they would know which of their friend's rocks they had found). Lot of different things. All of the kids found themselves in more trouble than before, though I suppose that is a given when you are constantly under what is essentially house arrest, and surrounded by the same people day after day.

The younger kids seemed to more so latch on the myself, family that lived on our property and was considered part of their 'household' and their siblings- that was the only form of physically close connection they really knew. They had no real issues coping with covid and lockdown because it was all they knew, and as previously stated, they showed no huge social hinderances until suddenly they were allowed to meet outsiders in a way they had never been able to before.