Where do you find community these days?
Where do you connect with people who are different from you?
For many, social media isn’t that place anymore. Sure, we may still spend a lot of time on these platforms, but they’re no longer providing the sense of human connection we crave, and often they add to our stress.
We know that newborns respond to faces from birth, and human touch and closeness are key to their healthy development. Adults need human-to-human interaction too, beyond what any screen can provide.
“Electronic communication is here to stay, so we need to learn how to integrate it into our lives. But if it replaces live interactions, you’re going to be missing some important benefits and probably be less fulfilled,” says a professor whose newly released summary of research found that digital communications are better than nothing but fall short of in-person interactions.
I’ll always choose an in-person meeting over a video call if time and distance allow. A one-on-one meeting provides an opportunity to connect beyond the business at hand, ideally with frequent digressions.
In larger in-person groups, we can read facial expressions and head nodding across the room. I usually find the most important connections in the unstructured time before or after the formal agenda starts. It’s rooted in my experience in journalism, where the best quotes were delivered in the hallway, not the meeting room.
While the big coffee chains have embraced drive-through, it can be hard to find seats inside at my local independent coffee houses. Clearly, these local spots are meeting a need.
Blue Sparrow, the coffee shop in our building’s lobby near the Colorado Capitol, stays full most of the day, and most customers are talking with others while they’re there. I joke that lobbyists could camp out there and run into all the policymakers they’re trying to reach.
The holidays always offer an opportunity to unplug, and our family enjoyed a jigsaw puzzle from Boulder-based Liberty Puzzles, which just celebrated its 20th birthday. A puzzle provides a great opportunity to sit together for a long time and talk about completely unrelated topics.
Interestingly, Liberty Puzzles was co-founded by the son of former Colorado U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth, who got an early taste of the political toxicity that defines today’s D.C. dynamics. Maybe there’s an origin story there.
Of course, digital connections allow us to communicate with people who live far away, when in-person meetings are impractical. And it allows us to communicate at scale.
I had a great video conversation this month with community builder Kenny Andejeski in Chattanooga. We both value in-person conversations, yet he lives 1,200 miles from me. Now that we’ve connected through Teams, maybe we’ll find an opportunity to meet in person this year!
My social media time is now spent almost exclusively on LinkedIn, and I’m not the only person increasingly drawn there.
These days, LinkedIn is not just for job seekers – it’s a good platform for sharing and consuming compelling content, and includes a range of users from students to retirees. It’s got some key benefits I appreciate:
- People use their real names and professional profiles so they’re accountable for what they say. This reduces toxicity and trolling.
- It allows users to limit political content in their feed. Many still offer strong points of view on their areas of interest and expertise, including controversial topics that aren’t restricted by LinkedIn’s definition of political content. But rarely does blatantly partisan and unconstructive content slip through the filter.
- The algorithm doesn’t seem to reward bad behavior and, in fact, offers opportunities to report problematic content.
Yes, there’s also a lot of self-promotional BS on LinkedIn from those who are perpetually “humbled and honored” by awards for which they asked others to nominate them. However, LinkedIn provides tools to help curate our feeds so we can get less of that. And the unfollow button is your friend!
Whether it happens in person or virtually, coming together to listen to one another, increase understanding of our differences, and look for solutions together feels more urgent than ever. People feel they belong when they have a voice and opportunities to help shape the future of their community – neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. And when people feel heard, connected, and supported, everyone benefits.
Feeling connected and having a sense of belonging is essential for physical and mental health.
In school, belonging improves academic achievement; at work, belonging boosts job satisfaction and engagement. Research shows that belonging also strengthens community well-being and resilience. Unfortunately, only about half of Coloradans say they feel a strong sense of belonging in their local community.
Our friends at Belonging Colorado are working to change that. Through locally based projects across the state made possible by a special fund at The Denver Foundation, communities are working to find new ways to bridge divides and increase belonging.
Learn more about Belonging Colorado here.
But back to you:
Where do you find community these days? Where do you connect with people who are different from you?
Email me at Eric@SE2ChangeForGood.com or find me on LinkedIn if you’d like to share or just connect.
