When work from home and study from online courses become many people’s new daily life, you may find out that being active and keeping in touch with people start to become harder and harder. While practicing social distancing is crucial and required to beat the coronavirus in many countries, being socially connected is still very important for people’s mental health. You probably put much more efforts than ever to stay in touch with your close friends, family and colleagues during this stressful period. However, even you can make more texts or video calls with the family and close friends, surprisingly you may find yourself start missing lots of interactions with people, especially, with strangers or some people you barely know. How come? It’s actually quite normal because you are probably missing your weak ties.
Many people do not realize that they actually belong to a much wider and complex social network than they believe they belong to. According to Robin Dunbar’s study, the average number of individuals’ stable social relationship is 150. Only around 50 of 150 relationships can be defined as the close network, the remaining are likely to be counted as your weak tie relationships. Think of the barista that you have small conversations many times a week, the the people you meet when you walk the dogs, or some people you see at the gym, they are all your weak ties.
Some people think maintaining the weak ties relationship could be useless, but the truth is that weak ties play an important role in everyone’s life. Baumeister and Leary point out that human being needs belongingness, the fully satisfying relationship.Weak ties relationship greatly help people to expand their friend circle and feel less alone. Moreover, weak ties could bring people more information and opportunities. Mark Granovetter’s study shows people could find some unique job opening information from their weak tie network. Also, Gillian and Elizabeth’s study shows that the interactions with people’s weak ties network could even contribute more happiness to individuals than people interactive with close friends or family members.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing may let everyone has a high chance of losing some parts or even all of these weak tie interactions. According to the article Why You Miss Those Casual Friends So Much, people normally will have around 11 to 16 interactions with their weak ties each day. Stay connected with your strong ties is obviously crucial and beneficial. Still, you can keep in mind the importance of the weak ties and maintaining your weak ties could bring you some additional surprises.
Sources:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167214529799
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1995-29052-001
One reply on “Aren’t you missing your weak tie?”
This is definitely an interesting read! People feel depressed and lonely more during these trying times because the number of social interactions they have has reduced. Your post just reinforces the idea why humans cannot stay isolated for long, and how isolation can also affect their physical and mental health. Good post!