For years psychologists have shown that social ties and increased contact with family and friends are associated with a lower risk of illness.
How many friends have you got? Are you in contact with them often? What about your family members? Do you have many interactions with them? Do you know who your neighbours are? Are you involved in any community groups? The reason I ask these questions is because study after study confirm that social connectedness is linked to greater health outcomes. Strong social ties seem to have a direct and positive impact on our health. Higher levels of perceived social connectedness are associated with lower blood pressure rates, better immune responses, and lower levels of stress hormones (Uchino et al., 1996). Indeed, studies have also shown that higher levels of trust between residents are associated with lower mortality rates (Louchner et al., 2003).
Often we can find ourselves detached from people. People need people. In recent decades we have started to communicate more through technology. Technology has its advantages but real face-to-face communication has fallen victim to these advances. When I grew up in Carrickmacross we had one television. Two channels. The second channel only came on air after five o’clock in the afternoon. We were so bored that we had to leave the house and play. We had to meet up with other children. If I wanted a game of soccer I had to knock a neighbour’s door. Nowadays children are playing FIFA online with someone that they will never know or meet. For my generation there was little on the television that would engage a teenager. As a consequence we visited each other’s homes more. Nowadays we find a television in every room. Hundred of stations! Family members locked more and more into their own worlds.
Strong social ties seem to have a direct and positive impact on our health.
How many families sit at the table for dinner? How many families hear each others stories from their days? The microwave was a great invention but when I was younger I had to come to the table when my mother called me for dinner. Or the dinner would be cold! Nowadays children can scream from upstairs ‘I’m on level four and I’ll lose all my progress if I come down now”. Sometimes we find ourselves eating dinner on our own. Or children eating their dinner on their laps in another room.
Houses are closer together but I often wonder have we grown further apart. Texting. Emailing. Skyping. Snapchatting. Tweets. I’m not being an ole crank but I think it’s hard to beat a face-to-face interaction. Research shows that we need more of it in our lives. Wouldn’t it be great if we banned technology from the dinner table altogether? Do we really need our mobile phones or ipads in the restaurant? When granny visits do we need to be on the Internet too as we chat to her? Does the television have to be on in the background? For years psychologists have shown that social ties and increased contact with family and friends are associated with a lower risk of illness. What’s more, a 2010 meta-analysis of 148 studies showed that social connection doesn’t just help us survive health problems but the lack of it causes them (Williams, 2011). As Christmas approaches let us make some room to meet our friends again? Let’s create space for real and meaningful interaction. We might then discover what we have been missing!
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