If you took the tube at any point this year around February you will have noticed billboards that ran something like ‘Talk to a stranger on the tube? Nah. Tinder!’ It was part of Three Mobile UK’s #phonesaregood campaign that tried to controversially contradict the idea that phones are inherently bad for us and distancing us from each other and real intimacy.
The Three ad might have suggested that talking to a stranger is weird or at least difficult, but according to a new study from the University of Essex, apparently talking to strangers has enormous health benefits!
The study got participants to initiate conversation with people they described as having ‘weak social connections’ with and continue ta. They then were asked to self report on how they felt afterwards about the interaction. The results were surprising, the vast majority of respondents saying that they felt positive about themselves after the interaction and even felt that they were more likely to do it again after the first few times, and even after some of the interactions didn’t go smoothly.
The study was carried out to measure how interactions with near strangers effect loneliness and our sense of selves in a moment when in the UK at least the levels of loneliness have reached epidemic levels, with a loneliness minister being appointed even this year!
A correlation can be made also with re the sense of dissatisfaction that many experience from app dating (Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, what have you!) as the in-built casualty plus the screen as a medium seemed to contribute in a general sense of disconnectedness.
So, if you believe in such things as September resolutions, perhaps do yourself a favour, don’t listen to that Three ad, and talk to a stranger!
