The effect of weak ties on mental health during the pandemic
https://hbr.org/2020/04/why-you-miss-those-casual-friends-so-much
The pandemic has drastically changed lives in many ways, one of which is the layout of social networks. Due to the need to quarantine & socially distance, the amount of casual friends/interactions has drastically decreased. While this change is necessary for public health reasons, this article from Harvard Business Review notes that severing casual interactions has a negative impact on social satisfaction; the more frequent these interactions occur, the happier people tend to be.
While our strongest relationships—like with close friends & family—are indeed supportive, casual interactions go a long way: “since we are often on our best behavior with people we don’t know well. Weak-tie relationships give us short, low-cost, informal interactions, which often provide new information and social variety. As a result, we are often pleasantly surprised by these moments.” The article notes that on a given day, people interact with roughly 11-16 weak ties. It then mentions research that shows “even a few minutes of texting is enough to improve your mood and spread joy within your social network,” while then discusses tips for increasing these interactions during a pandemic.
Using what we’ve learned about networks so far, we can think of relationships in terms of strong & weak ties: strong ties being close friends & family, and weak ties being casual friends/interactions. Note that in this network, weak ties outnumber strong ties. Even though people can still (generally) quarantine with strong ties, when more “components” are created in the network by severing weak ties, a dramatically large number of ties are cut off & the network decreases in size. Additionally, it is now much harder to create & sustain weak ties.
The article points to relevant topics from class and the current COVID era—this concept of limiting casual interactions (our weak ties) especially affects all of us students as visits to campus are limited, in-person lectures with hundreds of students & professors are essentially nonexistent, and all around, we are not surrounded by thousands of other students, faculty, & campus-goers; our daily interactions have been massively cut down.