Lost Connections, Found Health
Strong friendships can boost your health, reducing the risk of depression and other ailments. Moreover, a significant part of the vintage lifestyle is based on maintaining authentic social ties. So much of modern life is based on pseudo-relationships, “networking,” parasocial connections on social media, and relative social isolation. To have friendships, for our great-grandparents and beyond, was to actively maintain connections that had meaning. It required effort, handwriting letters, remembering important dates, and paying visits. Scientific American has recently explored the question of rekindling connections that were once lost, and the hesitation in the modern day when it comes to doing so. Here is how they describe their hypotheses and experience:
In fact, we discovered that if people could get past their worries, they were indeed interested in reconnecting. When we asked 199 young adults to think about either getting in touch with an old friend or hearing from one, they preferred the latter. It’s not that people are uninterested but rather that they are reluctant to initiate these interactions.
So we conducted two experiments with more than 1,000 people to see whether we could encourage them to call or write to an old friend. This proved surprisingly tricky even though we tried to make it as easy as possible. We recruited only people who were able to think of an old friend whom they wanted to reconnect with and who they thought would be happy to hear from them. Moreover, we made sure that participants had their friend’s contact information, and we gave them a few minutes to draft a message.
Despite these favorable conditions, fewer than a third of people sent the message. Yet people who did reported greater feelings of happiness immediately afterward than those who didn’t.
As this article explains, people often lose touch with friends due to life changes, but research shows that reconnecting can be mutually beneficial. While many people are reluctant to reach out, those reap the rewards. The article further suggests that practicing social interactions, such as messaging current friends, can make it easier to reconnect with old ones. Reconnecting with old friends can be a rewarding experience, and overcoming initial hesitation can lead to stronger bonds and greater well-being. If you’re wondering whether or not to write that letter or make that phone call, take this as your sign to do it.