Corona Daily 147: Two Lonely Generations

At the beginning of this month, I came across ShareAmi, a website that connects French language students with elderly people in France. With the pandemic, many foreign students learning French had their internships, summer camps, cultural exchanges cancelled. They were worried about losing touch with the language. ShareAmi has managed to link nearly 7000 students with elderly native speakers, many in Parisian care homes. The Zoom calls have proven mutually beneficial. Students reported that finding subjects for conversation was much easier than they had imagined. (My own experience when learning foreign languages is that the older generation has superior phonetics and diction. Elderly ladies are the easiest to understand for a foreigner).  

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Last week, I came across a study conducted in the USA. Based on the interaction with 950 Americans, the study finds that the loneliest group in the pandemic is age group 18-25. Even before the pandemic, young adults were shifting to virtual interactions. The pandemic has made them lonelier. Their main grievance, the study finds, is that nobody sincerely bothers about how they are doing.

The second loneliest group is the elderly 70+.

It seems the pandemic has further widened the gap between those two groups.

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I must point out this is an American study. Its results may apply to rich nations and rich households. In countries like India, where three generations routinely live together, this is not a problem, before or during the pandemic. As a child, I was raised by my grandmother, while my professor mother taught at the university.

The elderly possess a certain wisdom and life-long experiences about love, work, friendship, mortality they can share with the young. Young people, on the other hand, can teach them technology, have more pronounced views on racism or climate change. The grandparent generation produced lots of children, but the youngest have better sex education. My daughter can explain LGBTQ+ to my mother. The elderly have lived through wars and epidemics. They find it easier to believe the pandemic is temporary and will pass. During the Spanish flu, multigenerational households were a global norm.

Covid-19 is the first pandemic where millions of elderly and millions of young people are lonely. Loneliness is a pandemic itself that is getting worse.

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Like the ShareAmi French language initiative, there are other reports about these two lonely generations connecting with each other.

18-year-old Ella Gardner volunteered to shop and do chores for the elders. For her anthropology paper, she extensively Zoom interviewed her grandfather. Ella was always nervous about getting old. Her interaction during the pandemic has convinced her ageing is a natural process, and that older people can be very happy as well.

Sam Cozolino, 14, decided to use the lockdown to build a family tree. He started contacting his relatives in the USA, and Italy where his ancestors came from. This made Sam’s life busy and full of social interactions. His paternal grandmother told him stories about the family growing up in poverty in the USA during WWII. After hearing them, Sam realized the pandemic was not half as bad.

In many countries, teenagers are volunteering to book vaccine appointments for the elderly. Where vaccines are scarce, getting an online appointment may require technical expertise and perseverance.

In Boston, a company called Nesterley has started a home sharing service. Elders with extra rooms are matched with young people looking for affordable accommodation. Nesterley has some uplifting stories. In one home share that started during the pandemic, Michael Nelson, 28, a Harvard student from Denmark rented a room from Laurinda Bedingfield, 67, a retired civil engineer. Michael now bakes bread and cooks vegetarian meals for Laurinda. They go for walks together. Once she gets both her shots, she has promised to teach him photography and art.

“I feel much less isolated knowing that Michael is nearby. I have a friend who lives on my property and I can call him any time if I need help.” Said Laurinda.

Ravi