"If you're someone who rejoices at self-serve checkouts, automated banking, or online shopping-and I'll admit, I tick two out of three of these boxes-have you ever stopped to think about how taxing these shifts might be on the incidental social interactions we have with others? Recently, while reading Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection-And Why We All Need More, I realised just how much these incidental social opportunities are diminishing."
"Life gets busy, and we favour convenience and simplicity to make our hectic lives more manageable. But at what cost to our social habits? And what do we now need to do to strengthen them?I could not think of a better person to ask than the author himself, Stanford neuroscientist Ben Rein. Below are the questions I have been wanting to ask since reading his book."
"There's a ton of research out there showing that people tend to let anxieties get in the way of connection: We fear that conversations will go poorly, we anticipate that we will be rejected at far higher rates than we actually are, we underestimate the value of connection, and we also judge ourselves as worse at interacting than we really are."
Everyday conveniences such as self-serve checkouts, automated banking, and online shopping are diminishing incidental social interactions. People commonly overestimate the likelihood of rejection, underestimate the rewards of connection, and underrate their own social competence. Anxiety and anticipation of negative outcomes prevent many from initiating casual interactions despite evidence that most strangers welcome brief, spontaneous contact. Busy lives and prioritization of convenience reduce opportunities for small but meaningful social contact. Online platforms can erode empathy and accountability, further weakening everyday connection and increasing the need to intentionally strengthen social habits.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]