Christmas seems like a good time to write about the importance of social connection.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am the least qualified person in the world to be talking about this! But, as a self-declared hermit, I am using this opportunity to remind myself of the importance of empathy and connection and to set myself some ‘social’ New Year resolutions.
We are more connected than at any time in our human evolution, yet we are also unhappier than at any other point in time. The negative consequences of having thousands of shallow virtual connections delivered by distracting and additive platforms and fewer really meaningful and soul-nourishing face to face encounters is taking its toll.
Our primal need for social contact is hard wired through millions of years of evolution. Sharing food and other resources, caring for infants and the elderly, coordinating hunting parties and sharing vital information about freshwater sources and shelter helped our ancestors meet the challenges of their hostile environment.
Over time, early humans began to gather at hearths and shelters to eat and socialise. As brains became larger and more complex, growing up took longer—requiring more parental care and the protective environment of a home. Eventually, expanding social networks led to the complex social lives of modern humans.1,2
This genetic legacy is essential; humans evolved to live in a tribe. Numerous studies highlight the benefits of social connection for mental health and well-being and offer tangible and measurable physiological advantages.
Social connection is a pillar of lifestyle medicine. Humans are wired to connect, and this connection affects our health. From psychological theories to recent research, there is significant evidence that social support and feeling connected can help people maintain a healthy body mass index, control blood sugars, improve cancer survival, decrease cardiovascular mortality, decrease depressive symptoms, mitigate posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and improve overall mental health. The opposite of connection, social isolation, has a negative effect on health and can increase depressive symptoms as well as mortality. 3
In his book Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, UCLA professor Matthew Lieberman talks about humans having a social superpower – the ability to get inside the other person’s head and feel their pain, consider what they are thinking, and have empathy. The fact that we can do this gives us an unparalleled ability to cooperate and collaborate with others – which has been a large part of our success as a species.
According to neuroscientists, our ability to think socially (imagining other peoples’ thoughts and feelings about a situation) is so crucial that evolution created a separate brain system for social thinking than that dedicated to analytical thinking and logical reasoning. Using one of these brain systems temporarily quiets the other; if we think analytically, we find it hard to imagine peoples’ thoughts and feelings. But evolution prioritised social thinking above even critical thinking, so when we are not actively using logical reasoning, our predisposition is to be thinking socially.
There is a good case for getting socially connected to help us become smarter, happier and more productive in the real world of meaningful personal contact and healthy, supportive communities. But in a digital world, this predisposition could leave us vulnerable to exploitation, creating cascading and compounding negative impacts. 4
As highlighted by the mind-blowing documentary, ‘the social dilemma’ powerful influencers control how we consume information and ensure we are plugged in 24/7, returning to our devices repeatedly like a dependent drug addict. As a result, what we think are rational and objective choices about what to read and how we act around our devices are, in fact, utterly manipulated and controlled.
The apparent connectedness of online social media takes us away from the actual physical, social connection. One study found that users spent an average of 5 ½ hours a day on their smartphones. 5
Digital distraction is well known to erode and undermine real-life personal connections. Still, studies show it could be lowering your IQ as well as negatively affecting your social, emotional and spiritual intelligence! 5
Psychologist Daniel Levitin and others have also pointed out that multitasking—the essential smartphone activity—lowers your IQ and then spreads that weakened thinking across as many areas of life as possible. In The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information, Levitin reported that “being in a situation where you are trying to concentrate on a task, [while] an e-mail is sitting unread in your inbox, can reduce your effective IQ by 10 points.”
That used to be a mental decline we suffered only while we sat at our desks. Now we choose to make that 10-point IQ loss a 24/7 thing.
Today our daily news is filled with dramatic and apocalyptic messages that make us concerned for ourselves and our loved ones. But is it possible that this way of consuming media is shutting down our ability to think critically and make rational judgments? We are so distracted and dumbed down by our devices that we haven’t noticed what we are consuming is more in the interest of powerful influencers than ourselves and our families?
Unlike our ancient ancestors, who benefited from collaboration and information exchange to become the most intelligent and evolved species, we may have reached a point where our tendency for being social has turned against us!
In his superb TED talk, Johan Hari highlights research that shows humans are the loneliest we have ever been. He talks about the many mechanisms for depression and focuses on the often-overlooked phycological needs that lead to us becoming depressed and anxious. For example, not feeling like you belong, a lack of meaning and purpose, and feel like you are not seen or valued in your community are often the real root cause of depression and anxiety.
What if, as a society, rather than offer anti-depressants, we invested time and money into developing decentralised supportive community networks where we could come together and learn and grow, share and collaborate? We could potentially address loneliness, depression, and anxiety and a whole host of other issues such as health, childcare, resilient food sourcing, and education.
So this Christmas. Put down your phones, unplug from the internet, turn off the news and take some time to reconnect with family and friends in a meaningful and fully present way.
Next year perhaps one of your New Year resolutions could be to join or create a community group focused on promoting health from the soil up – a way of humans and our planet growing well together.
I know what I will be committing to – developing our Primal Web network to help facilitate this process.
Happy Christmas.
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