Instead of social distancing, try distant socializing

The same technologies that people once blamed for tearing society apart might be our best chance of staying together during the COVID-19 outbreak, an expert argues.

Social distancing—voluntarily limiting physical contact with other people—has been vital to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

It’s important that people remain connected during social distancing, however, otherwise a long-term mental and physical health crisis might follow the viral one, says Jamil Zaki, an associate professor of psychology at Stanford University’s and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory and author of The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World (Penguin-Random House, 2019).

Zaki’s research examines how empathy works and how people can learn to empathize more effectively.

Here, he discusses strategies to stay connected, starting with the reframing of “social distancing” to “physical distancing” to highlight how people can remain together even while being apart:

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