Abstract
Social isolation during the COVID-19 epidemic has emerged as a significant public health concern, posing a threat to adolescents’ psychological wellbeing. However, no studies have explored this association within the context of Chinese collectivist culture, and the potential mechanisms between them remain insufficiently investigated. Based on the stress process theory, this study examines the associations between social isolation and its two types (family isolation and friend isolation) and adolescents’ psychological wellbeing. Additionally, guided by the frameworks of stress proliferation and stress susceptibility, this study investigates the mediating effects of loneliness and the moderating effects of resilience on the aforementioned associations. A sample of 1,987 Chinese adolescents was recruited from nine junior high schools in Zhejiang province. The results indicate that (1) social isolation and its types (family isolation and friend isolation) due to COVID-19 were significantly negatively associated with adolescents’ psychological wellbeing; (2) loneliness played mediating effects on these associations; (3) resilience played moderating roles in the associations between social isolation and its types, and loneliness rather than in the link between loneliness and psychological wellbeing. Furthermore, the mediating effects of loneliness were moderated by resilience, exhibiting greater strength for adolescents with lower resilience but not reaching significance for those with higher resilience. These findings underscore the importance of investing resources to address social isolation and enhance resilience among adolescents. Additionally, interventions aimed at mitigating loneliness could effectively counteract the negative impact of social isolation on adolescents’ psychological wellbeing, particularly for those with lower resilience.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge 1987 Chinese adolescents from nine junior high schools in Zhejiang Province who participated in the survey.
Funding
This article is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics [JBK23YJ61], the Worldwide Universities Network Research Development Fund 2020 titled Health & Social Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Young People across the Socioeconomic Ladder: A Cross-Country Comparative Study, and the Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Fundation Project [22ZJQN51YB].
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JS: Formal analysis, Writing original draft. GM: Methodology, Review and editing. XL: Conceptualization. YJ: Supervision.
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Shi, J., Ma, G., Liu, X. et al. Social isolation and adolescents’ psychological wellbeing during the COVID-19 epidemic: the mediating effect of loneliness and the moderating effect of resilience. Curr Psychol 43, 17163–17174 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05637-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05637-x