Low levels of social wellness are common in our society for a variety of reasons. There may also be reasons why our own individual lives exhibit poor social wellness. We live now in a world of cubicles, apartments, ear buds, dark glasses, chat rooms and television. We climb into our car and click the garage door opener to travel from our gated community to our corporate underground parking. We are increasingly cut off from one another. We are too busy multi-tasking to connect at a deep and personal level.
Research into the causes of the breakdown of our social connection is in its earliest stages and conclusions are not universally agreed upon. Even the most qualified professionals hesitate to make a judgment due to the lack of any ability to demonstrate proof via the scientific method. However I have no such restrictions.
I believe the first cause is (are you ready for this?) oil. Energy is wealth. It is the equivalent of slaves or servants. A lot of them. With enough cheap energy, I don’t need anyone. This in turn precipitates the dissolution of families, businesses, neighborhoods and societies. And these days, though few people realize it, oil makes us all wealthy by providing each of with the equivalent of a hundred or more slaves to do our bidding every day in the form of transportation, light, heat, cloths, food production and preparation and just about everything else imaginable.
The second biggest cause is technology. First in the form of television and then in the form of the Internet. According to the historical record, as soon as television comes onto the stage social connectivity in North America begins to decline pretty much like falling off a cliff.
Spending social time with others has declined dramatically since the early nineteen sixties. Attendance in civic or social groups has declined to the point where many traditional organizations are unsustainable. They have minimal core of aging members and the organizations will not outlive them because there are no new members. This is happening in traditional places of worship, sports leagues and in every kind of club or society. Unfortunately, as we gave up membership in these organizations, we also gave up the social connectivity they provided and thus the social wellness inherent in them. We threw the baby out with the bathwater.
The primary substitute for social participation has been television. If you are old enough to remember life before television, you may recall your parents having friends over to your house to visit, going as a family to spend the evening at a neighbor’s house, or the recreation rooms once so common in homes at that time. You may recall your parents or even yourself playing card or board games with others in the evening or on weekends. Now what do the majority of people do in the evening? Watch television.
Television is primarily about people and relationships and has become our surrogate social circle. We gave up having friends for watching “Friends”. Film and television have done more than any other force to change our concept of our selves within society. Where once we understood the interdependence of our lives we have been relentlessly presented with the ideal of the “self made man”, the rugged individual, as if this was our nature and our highest, truest self. But as social animals we are not evolved or designed to be individuals but rather to be interdependent.
The willingness to initiate a social connection depends on our level of trust in general and that too has declined significantly over the past four generations. 80% of the members of the generation born between 1900 and 1930 believed “most people could be trusted.” By the time the generation born after 1970 were on the scene, only 40% of them believed most people could be trusted.
The average person in North America now has just two friends and that figure has been on the decline for the past twenty years. Additionally, on average 25% of the population lives alone, an increase from 18% just twenty years ago. Keep in mind that that is the average. The figure is much higher in urban than in rural areas. For example, according to the Statistics Canada 2001 census, the number of people living alone in my home town of Victoria, British Columbia, was a staggering 49%. Every other household has just one occupant.
In addition to the impact of societal changes and technology, some individuals are more likely than others to neglect their social wellness. Three personal levels of existence can contribute to an individual’s finding themselves with a diminished circle of friends – they are the biological, sociological and psychological.
The biological level is your personal DNA. You were born with a certain nature and if you are a shy and quiet person you are naturally going to meet with and connect to fewer people.
The sociological level is your culture of origin. If you come from a culture where eye contact is not encouraged, or where “good girls” don’t talk to strangers, you will naturally find it much more difficult to connect socially.
The psychological level is your personal conditioning, the behaviors you have learned over your lifetime. If you have conditioned yourself to spend the majority of your time in activities such as reading or watching TV, you will have far fewer opportunities to connect to others.
Another reason social isolation happens is aging. The older you get the more an effect attrition has on social wellness because people rarely notice the fact that the size of their social circle is steadily shrinking. It is an insidious process. In every dimension of our life, if we are not consciously working to grow and improve our health, nature takes its toll. If you do not exercise regularly you get weaker and unhealthier. If you do not save and invest, your financial health suffers. Similarly if you are not constantly investing in your social wellness, it is decreasing.
The size of your social circle has been decreasing since you left school. It decreased when you started working because you had less time and energy to spend with your friends. It decreased when you started a family for the same reason. It decreased when you retired because you lost whatever few social connections you had with your coworkers. If you do nothing to reverse the situation it will decrease dramatically when you become elderly and the members of your small circle of close friends begin to pass on.
People leave our social circle for innumerable reasons. Some are mentioned above but over the years those in our circle of friends simply get married, have children, move on or move away. Slowly, imperceptibly to most of us, our circle of friends diminishes.
Another cause of social isolation, especially in western societies, is the “only one” mindset. This highly romantic mindset considers intimacy to be exclusive, something that can be experienced with only one other person and that person is your husband or wife or equivalent. If that relationship comes to an end, as it does over 50% of the time, the parties are left with no one with whom they share an intimate connection.
This “only one” belief also assumes that all our needs, every part of our being, can be successfully expressed and shared within the confines of that exclusive relationship. Since this is highly unrealistic and unlikely, we can often be isolated in some form even while in a loving relationship. A part or parts of us are chronically isolated because they are shared with no one.
The wisest and healthiest couples cultivate and nurture a wide circle of friends to no less a degree than a single person does and for the same reasons. I believe this attitude is one of the greatest gifts loving partners can give each other.
Unfortunately, most of the factors that increase social isolation such as technology and declining levels of civic involvement and trust, are only getting worse and social wellness is decreasing dramatically.
Finally, I believe the main reason we neglect our social wellness however is that no one ever told us how important it is!
In school you were given an academic education. You also had classes in physical education, and perhaps “home economics” or trades training. You likely even had classes in sex education, but you did not have a class about the importance of social wellness.
You were not made aware of the importance of this critical dimension of your life at school or at home unless by example. At work the message is that socializing is not only unproductive but potentially career limiting.
Think of how many courses, books and other resources there are available regarding dietary issues and exercise. Every medical professional on earth chants the mantra of diet and exercise. There are countless doctors, societies, businesses and government bodies dedicated to our mental and physical health. Almost without exception they treat you as if you are an independent entity and your problems have no connection to your social situation.
Wherever you are right now you can go directly to a resource to address your physical or mental health needs. You will be able to find a doctor, a book, or a fitness center. But where are you going to go to improve your social wellness?
Many medical professionals know that with some of their patients the roots of their problems lie in their social isolation. The problem is that they have no education and no training in the subject and there are no resources at their disposal to recommend. They are also bound by the conventions of their profession. They have no prescription.
