REASONS WHY SOCIAL CONTACT IS NECESSARY FOR YOUR HEALTH

You may be an introvert and social contact someone you know fills you with dread. Heck, social contact with the people you know also fills you with a feeling as though, oh god, here it comes, now I have to make conversation. But during this pandemic, it may be your version of heaven, because it means no more contact and conversations needed while even if someone tries to make contact, they will have to maintain a six feet distance. But for an extrovert, it is their own version of hell that has come upon Earth. No more socialising?  No more clubbing? No more restaurant hopping? No more meeting new people? No more conversations? They might as well be jailed. Which they are within the four walls of their house. It is a proven research and study that social interaction is needed to stimulate the human brain and to get us going. It reduces the chances of depression and gets us out of our shells. We are made to surround ourselves with people and tend to depend on another person no matter how independent we are. As the lyrics go, we need someone to lean on.

Why social contact is so necessary?

We need to participate in various relationships and friendships because that is what gets us going. For example, I have a friend who is fiercely independent. She started earning as soon as she was sixteen, part-time jobs here and there, and by the time she was twenty-three she could support herself fully and had a full-time job. By twenty-five, she had her own house, taken under the loan, but it was still hers, and she lived alone. The first thing her father bought as a gift so a television set. All of us were bewildered. Once she completely moved in, he kept checking up on her routinely. Turns out, that he used to tell her to turn on the television and so that she does not feel lonely and the voice of the actors, anchors or whatever she watched would give her company and her brain the stimulation it required. When you live without social interaction, you tend to become lonely and honestly, humans are definitely not creatures that could live on their own and they do need the contact of human beings.

Being social improves your mental health. The friendships and the relationships that we grow and invest our time and energy in, is something that we really need. We need to share how we feel and how our day went, the smallest of details because it honestly helps a lot. Being social improves our overall health, be it mental, social or even physical. Our mental health is directly proportional to our physical health and vice versa. If our mental health goes on to a downward spiral, soon our physical health follows. We find comfort in social interactions, these social interactions keep us sane. With everyone between the closed walls of the house, tempers flare, everything is a mess, and everyone feels caged. It is but obvious. Then we possibly would be ranting what happened to a friend who would make us feel a lot better than we were feeling. This is one of the main reasons why need social interaction. It comforts us. It makes us think clearer and we are calmer after talking to someone. It gives us a new perspective. The smallest of touches send us comfort. A hug, a kiss, a pat on the shoulder, all of these are actions of comfort and helps us to cope. Now, during this pandemic, even the hardcore introverts crave for their friends, all of what we all took for granted. The talking face to face, a simple hug, the smallest of touches, the time where we could see the person’s smile and just seeing the faces of our parents or friends every day or whenever we wanted to see them. Social interaction is necessary for us humans because we need it and on many levels crave it too. We were not wired to be alone, we were wired to be on a society surrounded by people.