#social-connectedness

#social-connectedness

I wish this was a one-off blip in my regimented friendship schedule, but all through 2025 I played the world's slowest game of message tennis. I'd invite a pal for dinner, only for the world to turn, the seasons pass, grey hairs gather at my temples, before a date was finally locked in. This sentiment seems to be common among my circle.

If there's one finding in the psychological literature that warrants your most urgent attention, I'd argue that this is it: Social relationships are our most powerful psychological currency; they are the key to our psychological health. There is no "I" in "Self." The "I" is always in "Society." Human beings are social before they are anything else. Human interaction shapes our psychological landscape more than any other factor.

He resumed this theme in his "Parting Prescription for America," in January 2025, shortly before his term ended. As he emphasizes, and as we've noted previously, social connection has important effects on mental and physical health both through its objective dimensions-the number of relationships and communities, the time we spend with them, and the material supports they offer-and through the subjective sense of connection and belonging, of being loved and cared for.