During my university year of studying MPharm, one of my most favourite subjects appears to be my fourth year option: Health psychology. It has given me many insights of the different psychological aspects of patients' behaviour,and to me, it is like a journey of understanding human behaviours.
One of the topic that was covered during the course is social support. I found it particularly relevant to the phenomenon we come across today.
Social support can come in many forms and it can provide different functions. One of the important function of social support is to reduce stress in people. People will feel less stress when they know there are people to help. How does it work? It can work through a few mechanisms, while what I learned there are three: 1) Direct effects: Where in reality a person in need get actual help from his social network; 2) Matched hypothesis: people will always find someone that they think could help solving their problem to confide their secrets; and what amazes me is 3) Buffer effect: one doesnt have to be there to help but as long as the person knows he will be there if needed, it does reduces the stress of a person who perceived the help offered.
To me, the buffer effect is how the social support makes up the most of our relationships nowadays, especially when social media is becoming the main way of communication. Although we do need people around when we are in trouble, but most of the time we are NOT really in trouble. In daily life what we need more is a sense of security and assurance, that someone will always and is going to be there, to provide help when they are needed. The frequent contacts on whatsapp and the people in facebook that we always interact with, somehow provide us this kind of social support, giving us some mental reassurance through buffer effects. Although we don't really need them to be in presence with us all the time. We do feel a little safer when we know in mind who's there.
The concept can be applied in real life too. Imagine that we are at home. It's easy to feel lonely when we know there is nobody else at home. It seems the world has forgotten us and everyone has moved on without the presence of "me". However, when we are at home together with our housemates or parents, it might be a different story. Although u are not talking to them and were doing your own stuffs at different rooms, their presence surprisingly keep u safe, secure and warm, mentally and psychologically.
So, lonely or not? It depends on both physical and psychological aspects. Many people are physically alone but mentally or psychological they are not. However, psychological side of social support can never replace the physical support, don't u think so? We can never laugh together or watch movie together on whatsapp or facebook. It still makes a great difference to have a friend in real life and a virtual friend. Deep in our heart, we know that some kind of social support is like a bubble - it gives us temporary comfort but we knew we could never rely on that for help when we really need it. A social support that provides only buffer effect will easily bring in frustration and disappointment when it cannot fulfill our wish.
We are now living in an era where people are relying more and more heavily on the social support to give them a sense of self-existence or self security. This could lead to obsessive behaviours in playing online social media until it affects every day's life. Eventually we have to learn how to build our sense of security - not relying on other aspects, but on self-confidence and wisdom.
