Online chat and chat satisfactions ? How talking to other people benefits your brain and well being? We will discuss this topic, showing several examples of how social connection can be beneficial to your life.
Text messaging is a key component of day-to-day friend interactions: 55% of teens spend time every day texting with friends. The vast majority of teens (95%) spend time with their friends outside of school, in person, at least occasionally. But for most teens, this is not an everyday occurrence. Just 25% of teens spend time with friends in person (outside of school) on a daily basis. Do you want to lak with someone ?
Do you want a reason to talk to someone you don’t know ? Sometimes, talking to strangers does not lead to friendships or new romantic relationships. There is a chance that you will actually never meet some of these people again. However, having even that one conversation with them can be an eye opener. The stranger might change your perspective and give you a new way of looking at things that you have never considered before. In your professional life, your network is very important. Your network opens up opportunities for new business and new jobs, helps you climb up the corporate ladder, expands your support network, makes you more visible, helps you learn more about your field, and so on. This is why virtually all career coaches extol the importance of networking. Here is the kicker – networking requires you to actively go out and talk to strangers. Networking events are essentially platforms for strangers with common interests to meet and talk to each other. Read more details on talk with stranger.
To what extent is the internet associated with a transformation of American society from groups to networks? Myth has it that in the old days (a la Pleasantville), the average American had two parents, a single boss, and lived in a friendly village or neighborhood where everyone knew their names. Yet a variety of evidence suggests that many North Americans no longer are bound up in a single neighborhood, friendship, or kinship group. Rather, they maneuver in social networks. The difference is that a person’s network often consists of multiple and separate clusters.
According to research, more than 90% of human communication consists of body language. When you see the way that the person you are talking to reacts, you are able to better understand how they are feeling. One of the benefits of chat communication is the live feedback translated through the body language and facial expressions. Other forms of communication can never provide the advantage. You can also hear the tone of voice which makes it easier to interpret the person’s feelings. On the other hand, you are able to show your own reactions and emotions. For example, as a manager, with chat communication you can show your employees that you care, pushing them to perform better.
Why is identification important? Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) posits that our group memberships are just as important as individual identity in defining the self (see Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002) and thus are equally important determinants of our downstream outcomes mediated by the self-concept (such as well-being and behavior). We suggest that online forums are precisely this type of group; they function as a powerful site of community for their users. Furthermore, it is the development of the sense that this community is meaningfully connected to the self (i.e., forum identification) that creates the dual benefits of individual well-being and offline civic engagement. In other words, identification plays a mediating role that drives the other two outcomes of interest. In this section we highlight two of the many benefits of identification already established in the offline literature that we feel merit closer attention because they map onto our outcomes of interest. See more details on talk to strangers.