A 2023 report on Axios claimed that people were happier during the pandemic because everyone was kinder. Axios reporter and editor Rebecca Falconer cites the 2024 World Happiness Report and notes, "'Benevolence to others has risen roughly 25% since the pandemic began,' John Helliwell, a professor of economics at the University of British Columbia and a co-editor of the report, told CNN. 'Even during these difficult years, positive emotions have remained twice as prevalent as negative ones, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as those of loneliness.'"
With that in mind, this month we hit the five-year mark since the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Though we know the pandemic has affected everyone worldwide in some way or another, we're just now seeing research suggest which age groups were most affected mentally: English people over 50.
The study, entitled, "Recovery of psychological well-being following the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal analysis of the English longitudinal study of aging," was published in the peer reviewed-scientific journal Aging and Mental Health and posted to the National Library of Medicine. In it, nearly 4,000 people over the age of 50 living in England were examined for 11 years by a research team at University College London.
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The study's objective was "to assess changes in positive psychological well-being and depression before, during, and after the pandemic in older people, and evaluate whether mental well-being had returned to pre-pandemic levels after the pandemic." It also tested whether the responses received varied by age, gender and socioeconomic factors like living arrangements and economic resources.
In terms of method, they shared that mental health was measured by three assessments of positive well-being: "affective, eudaemonic, and evaluative."
Affective well-being refers to "the frequency and intensity with which people experience positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). PA and NA encompass both specific emotions and general mood states. Affective well-being is typically measured by asking people to rate the extent to which they experienced different affective states." In other words, people are asked to rate the strength and prevalence of their feelings over a given range of time.
Eudaemonic well-being refers to growth, self-fulfillment, and "flourishing long-term." It's the opposite of hedonism, which we might think of as impulsive or what makes someone happy "in the moment." On PositivePsychology.com, Anna Katharina Schaffner, Ph.D., references Aristotle, who believed that "the eudaemonic life is one of virtuous activity, exercised in accordance with reason. It is also oriented toward excellence."
Lastly, Evaluative well-being is essentially a "reflective assessment of an individual's overall satisfaction with life."
Participants were asked to reflect on their overall satisfaction with life.
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
What was surprising was that middle-aged people, in particular, seemed to have the biggest bounce-back after the pandemic, particularly in terms of eudaemonic well-being. According to a piece published by Taylor and Francis Group that quotes the aforementioned study, people in their 50s actually reported being less happy than those older than them before the pandemic (say, 60s and 70s). "This finding may reflect unique challenges faced by people in their 50s, including midlife stressors such as financial responsibilities, caregiving roles, and work pressures."
However, "they also showed greater recovery after the pandemic, suggesting a good degree of resilience or an ability to adapt."
The study also found that, though depression has usually been higher in lower-income people before the pandemic, affluent people had a harder time adapting to the lockdown. "But perhaps counterintuitively, the psychological well-being of wealthier participants fell more than that of the poorer cohort during the pandemic itself; they showed larger decreases in happiness, eudaimonic well-being, and life satisfaction."
Connection is key. www.yokota.af.mil
And in other good news? In a 2024 Axios article, markets correspondent Emily Peck explains, "This all comes down to connecting with others; Americans age 60 and over are less lonely and feel more socially connected than their younger peers."
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.