The primary aim of our study was to understand whether, when, and how social connections through the internet and other electronic means might promote rather than compromise health at the level of immune biology during the recent pandemic crisis. The positive impacts of social connections on general health and immune biology are well-documented. However, during the pandemic health crisis, digital interactions often replace conventional, person-to-person contacts, especially during key periods such as lockdowns, with potential negative health impacts for some, but with compensatory or even positive impacts for others. Researchers do not yet understand whether these decreases in face-to-face social interactions might be beneficially compensated by increases in digital social connections, and so sustain health and immune biology.

In the study's primary biocultural analysis of 142 college undergraduate students during the COVID social distancing era, those with strong real-world social connections showed higher levels of molecular well-being on an RNA-based immune biomarker. However, online social connections showed no such benefit. Digitally mediated social relations, then, do not appear to substantially offset the absence of in-person social connection in the context of immune cell gene regulation. More detailed presentation of these results can be found here:

Social connection and gene regulation during the COVID-19 pandemic: Divergent patterns for online and in-person interaction, by J.G. Snodgrass, S. Bendeck, K.X. Zhao, S. Sagstetter, M.G. Lacy, C. Nixon, J.R. Branstrator, J.M.G. Arevalo and S.W. Cole, Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2022, vol 144C, 105885.

The study contributes to anthropology by providing better evidence for whether digitally mediated forms of social standing and connection affect immune biology in the same ways as previously documented for in-person relationships, and to determine which relational strategies are helpful/ healthy and which are counterproductive/ dysfunctional. We also aimed to expand the field of social genomics in ways that better account for the roles played by culture in influencing immune biology and health. Our research findings are consistent with a body of interdisciplinary literature pointing to relationships between immune system gene regulation and both measures of social deprivation (loneliness) as well as positive social connections. These findings point to how in-person social connections might serve as a source of health and disease resilience during crises such as pandemics, particularly given the key roles of innate antiviral responses and pro-inflammatory gene regulation (which we assessed in our study) in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 disease. However, in seeking to extend such analyses to internet socialization, we did not find support for the idea that stronger online social ties would be associated with improved antiviral immune biology, in a manner that might potentially offset the reduced face-to-face social relations stemming from pandemic conditions. Prior research has pointed to how online interactions can foster meaningful virtual identities and relationships, and potentially alter immune biology. Nevertheless, our results do not support the idea that these online connections can substitute for in-person social relations as a major source of health resilience during the pandemic among this healthy sample of community-dwelling young adults, despite the risks of antiviral immunity being compromised due to rising rates of social isolation and felt loneliness.

Overall, our study results underscore the need to understand more fully the cultural, psychological, neural, and immunologic pathways through which social connections influence physical health and to explore more thoroughly the contexts in which digital interactions might be employed to help enhance the health-protective effects of in-person social connections. Research such as ours helps promote new perspectives and practical interventions on how to maintain health during pandemic events and other disasters. As human social existence becomes ever more deeply mediated by digital representations and networks, there is a heightened need to translate existing research on the health correlates of social connection into the new medium of digital socializing. Research on the mechanisms, risks, and rewards involved reveals the potential role of social mechanisms for mitigating health threats that are immanent both during the pandemic and well beyond that into other newly emerging forms of human social existence. Additionally, the involvement of university students as research collaborators has contributed to their educational development, with those undergraduate and graduate students gaining valuable research opportunities in this project?s collaborative lab environment.

Last Modified: 11/06/2022
Modified by: Jeffrey Snodgrass