{"doi":"10.1111/jgs.17607","title":"Can changes in social contact (frequency and mode) mitigate low mood before and during the <scp>COVID</scp> ‐19 pandemic? The <scp>I‐CONECT</scp> project","abstract":"BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global outbreak allowed a natural experiment to observe how older adults changed social patterns and how it affected their emotional well-being. We studied the frequency and modes of social contact and their effects on older adults' mood before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. DESIGN: Phone-based surveys were administered weekly before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. SETTING: Participants were recruited from Portland, Oregon, and Detroit, Michigan. PARTICIPANTS: Older adults ≥75 years old (n = 155, age = 81.0 ± 4.5, 72.3% women) were included in a randomized controlled trial, the Internet-Based Conversational Engagement Clinical Trial (I-CONECT). MEASUREMENTS: Low mood was self-reported as feeling downhearted or blue for three or more days in the past week. Social contact was self-reported by the amount of time spent in interactions, with whom (family, friends, others), and via which modes (in-person, phone/video call, text/email/letter). RESULTS: A total of 5525 weeks of data were derived from 155 participants. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, average social interaction time spent in-person, on phone/video call, and via text/email/letter was 406, 141, and 68 min/week, respectively. During the COVID-19 pandemic, time spent in-person was reduced by 135 min/week, while time spent via phone/video call and writing increased by 33 and 26 mins/week, respectively. In-person family contact was associated with less low mood regardless of the pandemic (odds ratio = 0.92, p < 0.05). There was a COVID-19 × text/email/letter with friends interaction (odds ratio = 0.77, p = 0.03), suggesting that during the COVID-19 pandemic, an increase of 1 h of writing with friends per week was associated with a 23% decrease in the likelihood of experiencing low mood. CONCLUSION: The lost in-person time relating to COVID-19 restrictions tended to be partially compensated for with increased calls and writing time, although overall social interaction time decreased. During the COVID-19 pandemic, at least two types of social interactions (writing to friends and in-person family time) showed promise for mitigating low mood for older adults with limited social resources.","journal":"Journal of the American Geriatrics Society","year":2021,"id":177995,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":20,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9459,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":325849,"name":"Nora Mattek","orcid":"0000-0003-2623-1969","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":325851,"name":"Katherine Wild","orcid":"0000-0002-6749-9729","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":533047,"name":"Lyndsey Miller","orcid":"0000-0003-3443-3376","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":55003,"name":"Jeffrey Kaye","orcid":"0000-0002-9971-3478","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":263968,"name":"Lisa C. Silbert","orcid":"0000-0002-4525-0068","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":325840,"name":"Hiroko H. Dodge","orcid":"0000-0001-7290-8307","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":533046,"name":"Chao‐Yi Wu","orcid":"0000-0002-2187-6509","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":38,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:47:36.112170Z","pmid":"34881436","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}