Carr, DeborahBubenik, Sara2024-03-262023https://hdl.handle.net/2144/48504This dissertation examines how members of the millennial generation experienced feelings of loneliness and sought connection and support online during the COVID-19 pandemic. When stay-at-home orders went into effect in the U.S., physical separation from other people combined with the struggles of illness, death, unemployment, mental health symptoms, and more strained and severed networks of care at the same time that supportive connections were most needed – an issue we have seen in previous disasters as well. Overnight, social life became reliant on digital tools to a degree not previously attempted on this scale. Millennials quickly developed strategies for connection under stress and isolation, navigating the successes and failures of this new social terrain, and continuously revising these strategies against a backdrop of overlapping crises and political instability. Exploring their experiences during this time, I address the following questions which lie at the intersections of collective crises, social support, and digital connection: How do millennials seek, receive, and provide connection and support during a global crisis when face-to-face interactions are restricted? How do they define “social support,” and how is their ability to gain support and connection online shaped by constraints in physical environments? What do millennials find to be successful about digital connections, and where do these fall short? Finally, how is “loneliness” experienced, defined, and mitigated for members of this generation – a generation with the comparative lived experience of growing up with and without the opportunity to connect on social media? I use in-depth interviews with 52 millennials residing in Massachusetts during the early period of the pandemic and a seven-month digital ethnography on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I find that millennials miss the pre-pandemic support they felt from distal ties, with weak-tie connections and community integration being high on their list of pursuits in digital spaces. They develop creative and novel ways to connect online, finding avenues for joy during a difficult time. However, efforts to mitigate loneliness are complicated by distrust as millennials struggle with questions of authenticity online, while navigating their own performances of self within the challenges of vulnerability and political conflict. Situating digital connections in a greater web of perception, interaction, and conditions, I show how micro-level virtual interactions are shaped by structural constraints during a tumultuous time in U.S. history.en-USSociologyThesis/Dissertation2024-03-26