A recent study (as reported in this New York Times article)
indicates that the more we engage in conversations of some length and depth
(what the study calls “substantive” conversations) the happier we are, and that
people whose social interaction is heavily weighted toward “small talk” are less
happy. According to the article, the study doesn’t answer the obvious question:
Is it that happy people engage in deep conversations, or that deep
conversations make us happy? (That, apparently, is the subject of some follow-up
research.)
In a BBC interview, the author of the study acknowledged
that healthy-minded people certainly engage in conversation at both levels, but
that small talk for those in the happy group is probably limited to about 10%
of interactive time – kind of like “How ‘bout them Yankees?” at the beginning
of a cocktail party discussion before entering deeply into a twenty-minute tete-a-tete on the relationship between the current value of the Euro and the New York
Stock Exchange.
Although my example sounds flippant, my intention is not to
mock. I am one who hungers for conversation, and I find this research encouraging (though I am happy to report that
the study comes to no apparent conclusion about the importance of the deep
conversationalists knowing what they’re talking about!).
Interestingly, the study doesn’t delve into its application
to new social networks like Facebook, etc., but it certainly hints at some
logical conclusions: I enjoy – to a degree – the clipped and often witty Facebook
exchanges between and among dozens of friends – including (though to a lesser
extent) friends of friends. They even elicit witty repartee from me. But this
kind of interchange seems to have a built-in fatigue trigger – after a while it’s
literally no fun. With close and long-time friends, I switch to e-mail or
telephone and – although they must speak for themselves – I’ve never received an
e-mail from a friend that I thought was too long. I contend that a multi-day braided e-mail conversation among three friends discussing a subject at some depth approaches the same kind (though surely not the same degree) of fulfillment as a lengthy confab over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee. (I’m not the only
one who may be a challenging Facebook friend because of the difficulty of keeping
those short “comments” from turning into something like little essays.) As an old friend said in an initial Facebook exchange: “Hey, this is just
like e-mail – only less convenient!”
At the risk of damning with faint praise, Facebook has its place -- and I'm increasingly glad to be part of it. When you think about it, Facebook is almost a literal (and, I think, positive) response
to John Updike’s existential invitation: “We are all so curiously alone, but it’s
important that we keep making signals through the glass,” so I do not conclude (from this study) that happy people are on
e-mail and unhappy people are on Facebook. I conclude, rather,
that too much Facebook (or Twitter, or “how ‘bout them Yankees” or People
Magazine) can bring you down. (One can quibble with the exact figure, but 10% sounds about right.) Like the couch potato (in me) who needs to get out into the sun, the Facebooker (in all of us) needs to "hie thee to a coffee shop" and have a good old-fashioned bull session.
(I'd love to hear your views on this. Maybe on Facebook!)
