Intentional Connections: Celebrating Friendships in our Tech-Saturated Lives

We expect more from technology and less from each other. We create technology to provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

Sherry Turkle

References

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[2] Waldinger, R. (2014). What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study of happiness. TED. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KkKuTCFvzI

[3] Surkalim, D. L., Luo, M., Eres, R., Gebel, K., van Buskirk, J., Bauman, A., & Ding, D. (2022). The prevalence of loneliness across 113 countries: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ, 376. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2021-067068

[4] Rico-Uribe, L. A., Caballero, F. F., Martín-María, N., Cabello, M., Ayuso-Mateos, J. L., & Miret, M. (2018). Association of loneliness with all-cause mortality: A meta-analysis. PloS One, 13(1), e0190033. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190033

[5] Marttila, E., Koivula, A., & Räsänen, P. (2021). Does excessive social media use decrease subjective well-being? A longitudinal analysis of the relationship between problematic use, loneliness and life satisfaction. Telematics and Informatics, 59, 101556. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2020.101556

[6] Bonsaksen, T., Ruffolo, M., Price, D., Leung, J., Thygesen, H., Lamph, G.,Kabelenga, I. & Geirdal, A. Ø. (2023). Associations between social media use and loneliness in a cross-national population: do motives for social media use matter? Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine, 11(1), 2158089. https://doi.org/10.1080/21642850.2022.2158089

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[13] Girme, Y. U., Overall, N. C., & Faingataa, S. (2014). “Date nights” take two: The maintenance function of shared relationship activities. Personal Relationships, 21(1), 125-149. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12020

Why Friendships Fade Over Time

When was the last time you caught up with your friends from high school or college? It is a common, yet unspoken lament of busy professionals, where hectic work schedules limit the time and energy we used to have for our friends. We postpone that invitation to catch up with a high school friend because we need (or sometimes even prefer) to spend the weekends completing work projects. We may only hear from them (and them, from us) during birthdays – if we care to remember them at all in the first place. Research on the psychology of friendships shows that we have the most friends during our early to mid-20s. Our circle of connections, however, starts to shrink after the age of 25 [1]. An increasing focus on careers, parenting and caring for the elderly places increasing demands on our time and energies once we transition into our 30s. Friendships typically become one of the first casualties of a busy, full life. In one of the most-referenced TED videos presented by Robert Waldinger, the Harvard psychologist starts his talk by simply stating, “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period,” [2]. In positive psychology research, good relationships are often considered the ‘royal road to happiness.’ The value of strong, close connections is made evident in light of what studies show about their absence.

Studies on loneliness and disconnection show that levels of problematic loneliness are on the rise in most parts of the world [3]. The plight of the lonely has become a public health issue in several countries, with studies showing its links to increased all-cause mortality, an effect that is more pronounced among men than women [4]. Perhaps most notable are studies showing that increasing reports of loneliness are partly attributed to the use of technologies that were designed to connect us in the first place. Problematic social media use (PSMU), for instance, is associated with increased loneliness and lowered life satisfaction [5]. Counter-intuitively, one study showed that when we use social media as a means to maintain our relationships, we might end up feeling more, not less lonely. The authors of this study conclude, “While social media may facilitate social contact to a degree, they may not facilitate the type of contact sought by those who use social media for this reason [6]. Simply put, relying on social media for connections fails in helping us experience the psychological benefits of friendship.

Reconnecting Offline

The average Malaysian spends about 2 hours and 48 minutes daily on social media. That number may not be entirely concerning until you consider how this amount of on-screen time is separate from 8 hours and 17 minutes on the internet, plus an additional 2 hours and 51 minutes watching broadcasts and streaming television programs. We spend a measly hour and a half each day engaging in reading either online or physical print media [7]. On-screen interactions and social media validations create an illusion of connection. Friendships are reduced to delayed text and voice message exchanges. Our facial expressions are replaced with emojis, which, even when animated, don’t fully capture the richness and nuances of our conversations. When we connect with others through our glass screens, we filter out the messiness and emotions of face-to-face interactions. And in doing so, we also remove the authenticity that makes for real, meaningful human connections.

To reclaim our connections, it helps to be more mindful of how our friendship circles change over time and how technology might be impeding our desire for close connections. Connection is not synonymous with closeness – a point many researchers studying loneliness point out. The number of connections on your devices is not a reliable indicator of how tightly-knit and satisfied you are with your friendships. People can feel lonely even when their social media feed shows that they have thousands of ‘friends’. How might you reconnect with friends and engage with your important connections in a meaningful way? Here are some evidence-based interventions to try:

• Gratitude reflections and visits: Gratitude is an emotion we experience when we receive goodness from the efforts or sacrifices of another. Activities that promote gratitude have been shown to benefit well-being, making this emotion a potent contributor to our psychological health [8]. Are there certain friends who were instrumental in helping you get to where you are? Perhaps it was a friend who offered to care for your children while you needed to be away for work. Perhaps it was the colleague who stepped in to cover for you when you experienced a loss in your family. Or it might have been that friend whom you spent hours working with on an assignment, but have since lost touch with since they moved overseas. When was the last time you spoke to, and perhaps expressed your gratitude to, such individuals? A friendly email or text message might help spark an invitation for reconnection. A variation of these simple gratitude interventions is the gratitude visit, where participants were encouraged to reflect on individuals whom they are grateful for, and then to schedule a visit to recount and reflect on shared experiences [9]. The opportunity to reconnect and express your gratitude to those whom you are grateful for is a powerful way to reforge bonds with those who matter to you.

• Giving the gift of attention during conversation: Try swapping text messaging and video calls with an in-person interaction. Consider a suggestion by happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky: Contact a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while and schedule an in-person meetup with them. It can help, according to Lyubomirsky, to start with friends you already know, since it reminds both parties that the dormant friendship is something worth revisiting. When you do get the opportunity to meet, set aside distractors – our phones, in particular. Doing so can vastly improve conversational quality [10]. The greatest gift we can give others is our undistracted presence. Research on attunement – being aware of both our and the other person’s state of mind and emotions is a consistent predictor of conversational quality and relational harmony [11]. Listen with intention. Understand with empathy. Respond with openness and kindness. Take the opportunity to be attentive to your friends in a noisy, distracting world.

• Share off-screen experiences and activities: Recall the last time you enjoyed a shared, off-screen experience with friends. It might be the last time you went on a short trip together, or the time you threw a surprise birthday party for another friend. Findings from psychological research more than a decade ago, before the advances of technology and social media, show that sharing exciting and novel experiences helps foster stronger relationships [12]. Sharing such experiences strengthens relationship quality and offsets the potential for routine and boredom that can often stifle relationships. Co-experiencing novel activities can be especially helpful for romantic relationships. One study showed that these satisfying and stress-free experiences helped sustain the relationship more than simply accommodating (that is, simply “putting up with”) the other party [13]. Try varying your friendship routines by experiencing new activities together. A short weekend trip, going on a hike, or planning a picnic. Moving your interactions off-screen can help maintain and possibly enhance your friendships.

Our friendships don’t need to fade, even if we tend to have fewer close friends with age. Our most valued relationships may not necessarily need saving, but they do need to be nourished from time to time. In an era where connections and communications are driven by technology, we can take a different approach – building relationships like how we used to – in-person, with genuine and grateful interest for the most important people in our lives. Try at least one of the interventions suggested above and notice how these intentional approaches can go some way toward helping your friendships flourish.

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