When the coronavirus pandemic officially hit the US in March 2020, many lives were suddenly thrown into upheaval. The widespread effects of the virus were felt immediately across the country as people navigated the “new normal”, simultaneously awestruck and anxious about living through a Future Moment of History™. Because of the drastic disruption to daily life, there was an immediate call for people to keep “Coronavirus” or “quarantine” diaries to record their pandemic experiences.

As more people began to document their thoughts and fears across a mixed variety of platforms and media, another medium emerged as a major contender for recording quarantine experiences—Google Docs.

Google Docs is a free, online word processor known for its collaborative capabilities, as multiple users can contribute to a document at a time. In a pre-COVID era, Google Docs was popular amongst companies looking to easily create, edit, and share documents between employees. Students, too, were fond of the platform as they could pool lecture notes and communicate with each other during class.

But, in March 2020, when the first sheltering orders were implemented, tweets referring to “Google Docs” grew significantly, spiking to more than 150k tweets multiple times in March and April. 

This can likely be attributed to a significant portion of the US population searching for ways to navigate their new remote lives. Because of its accessibility and collaborative capabilities, Google Docs quickly became a practical medium on which online education, work, and socializing could occur. As a growing number of people continue to use Docs to partake in these previously in-person activities, they effectively capture what it’s like to negotiate life in quarantine by way of a digital diary. 

These diaries are virtual, communal spaces. They capture current realities, express anxieties, make plans for the future, provide entertainment, and facilitate community action. But, most uniquely, these diaries are collaborative.

A collaborative digital diary experience

Reminiscent of the way coworkers and students previously used Google Docs, the medium quickly grew as a popular method to create digital diaries that enabled communication, interaction, and collaboration. 

In one example, to provide “fellow social distancers” with a metaphorical escape from their home, Twitter user Anthony Smith created a virtual escape room using a complexly interlinked collection of Google Docs. In an interview with Quartz, Smith cited the “inherently collaborative” nature of Google Docs as a key factor in using the software to create the virtual escape room. (The other being that he knows how to use the software.) Inadvertently, he discovered how much more collaborative Google Docs could be after accidentally leaving one Doc’s editing permissions open to the public.

Quickly, people began to contribute their own messages (such as clues and well wishes to other players) on the document. Smith also suggested that the ability to see other active users on the Doc would further help people “feel a little more connected right now.”

And Smith isn’t the only one to reference the feeling of camaraderie that can be felt from the collaborative environment of Google Docs. Another Twitter user observed the intimacy of working concurrently with someone on a Doc during quarantine, tweeting: “Maybe I’ve been in quarantine for too long, but working on the same google doc [sic] as another person feels strangle tender.”

And this “strange tenderness” isn’t surprising—for around 10 centuries, keeping a diary has been a private act of personal introspection. It’s only recently that the concept of keeping a diary has gone digital and—even more recently—gone collaborative. 

As technology developed, diarists began to experiment with other modalities of journaling, such as typewriters and tape recorders. Throughout the 90s and early 00s, as more network technology and social media platforms emerged, keeping a diary became an increasingly digital experience that presented an interesting shift from personal to public-facing diaries. 

“The dawn of the internet played into this very human desire [to journal]”, writes Abby Ohlheiser and Tanya Basuarchive for MIT Technology Review. “Blogspot, Tumblr, and even early Facebook and Twitter had an element of “Dear Diary” to them.” 

The creation of interactive interfaces on which users could react to personal stories and share their own for algorithmic gain primed us culturally to consider these platforms as a viable way to nurture social connections through sharing personal experiences. As such, creating a collaborative digital diary was a natural evolution for people looking for ways to stay connected to others during a time of isolation. In effect, technology bulldozed the way for private diaries to become a public, then social, then collaborative media.

Additionally, since journaling is widely known for its therapeutic abilities, it’s no surprise that as we collectively undergo a traumatic culture shock that we are inclined to document it as a collective. The collaborative nature of Google Docs lends itself perfectly to this desire to not only capture life in quarantine as we experience it but also to process and navigate it together—even as we are separated.

In an article for Business Insider, Hillary Hoffower wrote that she is keeping a quarantine diary in Google Docs with her roommate: 

I also have a Google Doc labeled “Quarantine Diaries” with my roommate. We write in silly quotes or boring things documenting quarantine life. Journaling is a great way to process emotions amid this historic time period, but doing it with my roommate makes it a fun, shared experience rather than an individual one. It also helps us creatively keep in touch if one of us gets sick and has to quarantine ourselves to our room.

Another Twitter user showcased how they’re using Google Docs to maintain some levity in their social relationships through a quarantine diary kept by their friend group:

Meanwhile, local to worldwide organizations are also turning to Google Docs to create remarkably communal and collaborative digital diaries. In Wyoming, Albany County Republicans utilized Zoom broadcasts and Google Docs to hold a virtual caucus. The UN shared a Google Doc asking creatives to submit artwork that promoted public safety initiatives. And, more recently, essential workers for Amazon, Whole Foods, and Instacart organized a major labor strike with help from Google Docs.

Yet, even as people use Docs to navigate and record the ongoing crisis as it happens in real-time, there is already a rush to preserve this content. Knowing too well the way in which pages can vanish into the ether of the internet, researchers want to ensure the preservation of these digitally documented experiences. Psychology professor Karen Blair created a COVID-19 study to record how people are coping with the pandemic. The Wayback Machine, a digital library of internet content and web pages, is actively dedicated to collecting and archiving “important” pandemic-related content, according to its director, Mark Graham. 

Amongst this effort to preserve artifacts will no doubt be examples of the multifaceted use of Google Docs during the pandemic to create collaborative digital diaries. 

Traditionally, diaries have been a private act of personal introspection to process thoughts, feelings, and experiences. In recent decades, the development of technology and new media has led to the creation of digital diaries. And while these digital diaries have gotten more public and social with networked technology and social media, it is really during the recent pandemic that a movement towards a collaborative digital diary experience has been made. During quarantine, people used Google Docs to create and document collective experiences: from a virtual escape room to an organized labor strike to co-written diaries with friends and loved ones. Though it’s difficult to determine what will be considered “important” in the future in terms of documenting the ongoing crisis, the collaboration and creativity in which people used Google Docs to stay connected and create shared experiences even while isolated will certainly find its way into the archives.