Social Capital

For me personally, meaningful social connections are the foundation and the multiplier of lasting happiness, but the starting point lies within each one of us.

In the end, we determine the quality of our relationships through the quality of our relationship with ourselves.

Admittedly, an increased difficulty in impressing friends with neat tips and trivia hardly constitutes a social crisis. And perhaps benefiting from closely kept secrets was too easy in the past, anyway: In my Punch-Out example, I gained a disproportionately large amount of esteem for something that required very little effort or skill. But when the... See more

The convenience built into socialising in Spain makes it a low-effort ritual. It’s why the “living for the weekend” mindset doesn’t exist, and why the perennially semi-formal look of the average Spaniard makes it difficult to tell the day of the week by their clothes. Dressing correctly daily, they resist wardrobe categories such as weekday wear an... See more

Stuart Andrew, the British minister for loneliness, told me that one of the challenges of loneliness is the stigma that surrounds it.

In studies of peer groups, Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor who is the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity in California, observed that people tended to interact with fewer people as they moved toward midlife, but that they grew closer to the friends they already had.

Social isolation is the rare malady whose cure is fully known and costs relatively little, yet is still so difficult to achieve. In the 21st century, we are a social species living atomized lives; even when living in a high-rise apartment building in a densely inhabited city, surrounded by people in every direction, we can easily feel bereft and me... See more

she suggests, this is because people have an internal alarm clock that goes off at big life events, like turning 30. It reminds them that time horizons are shrinking, so it is a point to pull back on exploration and concentrate on the here and now. “You tend to focus on what is most emotionally important to you,” she said, “so you’re not interested... See more

Do Yourself a Favor and Go Find a ‘Third Place’

We need physical spaces for serendipitous, productivity-free conversation.

Is the secret to life a good email?