"Many studies of social isolation and loneliness focus on elderly populations. However, the COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique opportunity to understand how young adults understand and react to these concepts. The purpose of the study was to understand how students viewed their personal relationships during COVID, examine what students' descriptions of social isolation and loneliness revealed about how these concepts occur in an online setting, and finally understand what coping behaviors participants relied on throughout the pandemic.

The study involved a literature review, 12 qualitative interviews with SLU students of varying ages, and an analysis of the transcripts. Among many things, the study found that students' social networks shrank during the pandemic, however, many students reported becoming closer with a few people. Sometimes these people were in a "COVID bubble" and other times these were just the few people that they kept up with virtually. Online interactions were simply unable to maintain the vast social networks that college students ordinarily rely on."