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Researchers from 91��ý find that the pandemic reshaped how people age 55 and older interact with their communities while highlighting the importance of ‘social infrastructure’

The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped how people interact with their communities, but its effects on older Americans have been especially complex—altering daily routines, social connections and how people move through their communities even years later.

Those changes are at the center of a five‑year longitudinal study led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Michigan.��Hayes Hart‑Thompson(they/them), a graduate student and researcher in the 91��ý��Department of Geography, helped analyze how older adults adapted their lives during and after the pandemic.��

In a recent paper,�� Hart-Thompson and study co-authors provided a long-term view of how disruption turns into adaption, based upon survey responses from the same study participants since early 2020, all of whom are 55 or older.

Hayes Hart-Thompson is a graduate student in the 91��ý Department of Geography whose recently published research helped analyze how older adults adapted their lives during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.��

“What really stood out,” Hart‑Thompson explains, “was that people weren’t just responding to COVID itself. They were responding to the after‑effects—how the world had changed and how their routines had to change with it.”

Following routines over time

The study began in the early months of the pandemic, when participants were surveyed every month. As the crisis continued, Hart-Thompson says the research shifted to annual surveys, allowing researchers to track how people’s habits, perceptions and social lives evolved. The research focuses primarily on data from the fourth year of the study, although the research team has since received a fifth year of responses.

That fifth year added a reflective dimension, says Hart-Thompson. Participants were asked to look back over the previous five years and consider what they had learned, what they wished they had done differently and how their relationships with their neighborhoods and communities had changed. Hart‑Thompson says many people used that opportunity to rethink whom they spend time with, how they engage socially and what they value most.

“It gave us insight not just into what people are doing now,” they say, “but how they understand those changes in hindsight.”

What is social infrastructure?

A key concept in the research is “social infrastructure”—a term that Hart-Thompson says goes beyond physical buildings to describe the places that support social interaction and community life.��

“A library is a great example,” they say. “It’s a physical space but it also supports relationships, routines and access to resources. The same can be true for community centers, parks or even coffee shops. They’re physical spaces where relationships happen and routines take shape.”

The idea overlaps with what geographers and sociologists often call “third places”—spaces that are neither home (first place) nor work (second place) and that support community, connection and informal care. Third places captures both public and private spaces and reflects the full range of places people mentioned when describing how their routines changed during the pandemic.

Faith‑based organizations, in particular, played an important role for many participants, Hart-Thompson says.

“Especially with this older population we surveyed, churches provide consistent, low-cost—or no-cost—opportunities to see the same people regularly, which is incredibly important for maintaining social routines,” they say. “When concerns about disease spread or mobility made returning difficult, that loss was significant—even if services moved online.”

Aging: not a one-size-fits-all experience

The study focused on adults 55 and older, but Hart-Thompson says the researchers found that age alone did not determine how people experienced the pandemic. Instead, perception mattered just as much as chronology.

“How people felt about their age really shaped how they talked about their lives,” Hart‑Thompson explains. “Someone who felt old at 60 described their experiences very differently from someone who felt young at 80.”

Retirement status also made a major difference. Hart-Thompson explains that participants who were still working navigated different social environments than those who were retired. Health, mobility and daily obligations also influenced how much choice people felt they had in shaping their routines, they add.

Rather than finding a clear age‑based trend, Hart-Thompson says the researchers saw a mix of social and structural factors shaping each person’s experience.

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Health, mobility and daily obligations also influenced how much choice people felt they had in shaping their routines during and following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, says 91��ý researcher Hayes Hart-Thompson.

Not all changes were negative

“COVID-19 reduced in‑person social interaction for many older adults—but the impact was not uniformly harmful,” Hart-Thompson says. In fact, some participants described positive or neutral changes, particularly when technology expanded access.

For individuals with limited mobility, tools like Zoom opened doors that hadn’t existed before. Others found new routines they enjoyed, such as online exercise classes or increased time for solitude.

“At the same time,” Hart‑Thompson says, “there was a lot of avoidance—people staying away from spaces because of health fears or political tensions. It really depended on the activity and the individual.”

In many cases, they say, declining health or aging‑related challenges were already influencing routines even before the pandemic. “COVID-19 just intensified those trends and brought them into sharper focus,” Hart-Thompson adds.

A specific, but meaningful, sample

The study’s participants were predominantly white, female and college educated, with many living in the Midwest. While the sample included both rural and urban residents across the United States, study participants are not representative of the population as a whole, Hart-Thompson acknowledges.

They emphasize that the research team is mindful of those limitations. Rather than treating the data as universally generalizable, the focus is on what this specific group can tell researchers, particularly as an important group of voters. That’s because, in the fifth year of the study, researchers added questions about democracy and political perceptions to explore that dimension more directly.

“There’s also a real issue of privilege in survey research,” Hart‑Thompson says. “Who has the unpaid time to respond year after year? That shapes who shows up in the data.”

Politics, isolation and policy lessons

One unexpected finding was the degree to which the study retained participants from across the political spectrum, Hart-Thompson says. Despite the politicization of COVID-19 and growing mistrust in institutions, respondents with very different views continued to participate in the research, they add

That diversity complicated the narrative. Participants disagreed sharply on whether COVID-19 was a serious health threat, but those disagreements didn’t erase shared concerns about isolation and access.

Hart‑Thompson sees a clear lesson for policymakers: Adaptability matters more than uniformity.

“There’s never going to be a one‑size‑fits‑all solution,” they say. “But universal access to social spaces—both physical and digital—is crucial. Isolation is harmful regardless of political ideology.”

Hybrid events, online access and inclusive design can help ensure people aren’t left behind during future crises—particularly those who are older or immunocompromised, Hart-Thompson adds.

Living in a new normal

Perhaps the clearest conclusion from the research is that most older adults have not returned to their pre‑pandemic routines—and many don’t expect to, Hart-Thompson says.

They say participants frequently described living in a “new normal.” Some realized they value solitude more than they once thought. Others became more intentional about spending time with close friends and family. Even when routines resembled the past, people understood that the world had changed.

“There wasn’t this expectation that things would go back to exactly how they were,” Hart‑Thompson says. “Adaptation is the reality.”

That perspective, they believe, challenges the idea that recovery means returning to a previous state. Instead, it highlights how people reshape their lives in response to long‑term change—especially later in life.

Offering support in crisis . . . and in everyday life

As the research team begins analyzing five full years of data, Hart‑Thompson is particularly interested in how overlapping crises—also known as “polycrises”—shape everyday life. That’s because COVID-19 did not happen in isolation—and neither do its effects, they add.

Across all of it, one theme remains constant: the importance of adaptable, accessible social infrastructure.

“If we center access and adaptability,” Hart‑Thompson says, “we’re better equipped to support people—not just in crises, but in everyday life.”

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