The Paradox of Achieving Social Embeddedness Through Nonsocial Activities

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Gabriel, S. & Schneider, V. (2024). The need for social embeddedness: human belonging goes beyond dyadic bonds. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 0(0).

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s bestseller The Anxious Generation (2024) laments the loss of play in early childhood. Play helps children feel connected to each other, buffers against loneliness, and provides practice for conflict resolution, problem solving, and risk calculations. Phone-based childhoods replaced play-based childhoods in the 2010s, at a cost to mental health, physical health, and community well-being, Haidt argues. Humans have a deep need to be connected to one another, and easy, regular access to screens has changed the ways we think, feel, and act (see Haidt’s evidence here). 

Why might individuals gravitate to screen time given the potential costs to their well-being? Gabriel and Schneider’s (2024) research proposes an explanation: the need for social embeddedness. To be socially embedded is to feel that we are part of a broader framework and social collective. Embeddedness behaviors can help us feel like we are part of the social fabric and meet an evolutionary need that goes beyond what even a close dyadic relationship might offer us. Interestingly, the authors offer a more hopeful take on the potential benefits and motivators of screen time (such as watching television or developing parasocial relationships with celebrities on social media), going so far as to frame these activities as important work in the service of filling social embeddedness needs.  

The broad need for social embeddedness drives behavior, both consciously and implicitly. This need can be met through a wide variety of behaviors both screen-based and otherwise, including immersive experiences like going to a concert or sporting match. These activities fulfill a human social need, minus the pesky risk of social rejection. Paradoxically, the authors describe how social embeddedness can occur via nonsocial activities because our brains cannot distinguish between real relational embeddedness and the more superficial connections accompanying screen-based or immersive experiences. The feelings of social embeddedness achieved through parasocial relationships can help offset feelings of loneliness, as well. The authors predict that humans become psychologically connected to something bigger than themselves through narratives and parasocial connections to characters. Rather than framing these activities as symptoms of hedonism, laziness, or oversensitivity, the authors connect the behaviors to an evolutionary need that predates screens. The research framework raises interesting questions about the ways technology can supplant more traditional relationship-centered avenues to meet social embeddedness needs. 

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Reference 

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Press.