Understanding trends in loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic in The Netherlands: the moderating role of gender, age, and living arrangement.

Evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic and the preventive lockdown measures increased loneliness levels. However, most studies are cross-sectional or rely on a pre-post (pandemic) design. This study relies on multiple observations to analyze the impact of the lockdown on loneliness levels in the Netherlands, and test whether it differed by gender, age, and living arrangement. Longitudinal data from the Covid-Questionnaire within the Lifelines Cohort Study from the northern Netherlands was used. Data was gathered between March 2020 and July 2021 with a total of 21 waves and 769,526 observations nested in 74,844 individuals. The outcome was a multi-dimensional Loneliness Index. The association between the lockdown period and loneliness levels was estimated using fixed-effects linear regression. Moderation effects were tested by means of two-way interactions. Loneliness levels increased during stricter lockdown periods, and decreased when preventive measures were relaxed. Women and young adults experienced stronger fluctuations in their loneliness levels, whereas living arrangement did not play a notable moderating role. This study calls for special attention to be paid to the public issue of loneliness during periods of lockdown. Women and young adults appear as particularly vulnerable groups during the Covid-19 pandemic.