Decent shift away from thinking that frequent in-person social contact is necessary for most people.
Since March I have been extremely isolated. I like with my girlfriend but other than her I haven’t really interacted with other humans in person. I saw her friends in person two or three times. Other than that everything else has been <30 second conversations (paying the rent, getting groceries, etc.). And those conversations have been only about twice a month. So that’s an extremely low level of in-person social contact.
I feel a little bit of craving for in person social contact, but only a little bit. Which surprises me, because I would have expected to feel a good amount more.
My impression is that on the spectrum of “how often person needs in-person social contact”, I require less than other people, but I’m not too extreme. Maybe at the 10th or 20th percentile, something like that. And so if this is how I’m feeling, I’d expect people at the 30th percentile to feel a little more craving, people at the 40th to feel a little more than that, 50th a little more than that.
It’s hard to give a good qualitative description of this, but my impression is that the implication is that people up to eg. the 80th percentile wouldn’t experience a significant amount of distress or anything from this low a level of social contact. Which is not what I thought before my experiences since March.
Rather than speculating from this one data point, it would probably be more fruitful to look into what researchers have found, but this still feels worth writing up as an exercise at least.
Decent shift away from thinking that frequent in-person social contact is necessary for most people.
Since March I have been extremely isolated. I like with my girlfriend but other than her I haven’t really interacted with other humans in person. I saw her friends in person two or three times. Other than that everything else has been <30 second conversations (paying the rent, getting groceries, etc.). And those conversations have been only about twice a month. So that’s an extremely low level of in-person social contact.
I feel a little bit of craving for in person social contact, but only a little bit. Which surprises me, because I would have expected to feel a good amount more.
My impression is that on the spectrum of “how often person needs in-person social contact”, I require less than other people, but I’m not too extreme. Maybe at the 10th or 20th percentile, something like that. And so if this is how I’m feeling, I’d expect people at the 30th percentile to feel a little more craving, people at the 40th to feel a little more than that, 50th a little more than that.
It’s hard to give a good qualitative description of this, but my impression is that the implication is that people up to eg. the 80th percentile wouldn’t experience a significant amount of distress or anything from this low a level of social contact. Which is not what I thought before my experiences since March.
Rather than speculating from this one data point, it would probably be more fruitful to look into what researchers have found, but this still feels worth writing up as an exercise at least.