Refrigerator Rights

No, we’re not kidding at all. In Refrigerator Rights: Our Crucial Need for Close Connection, we argued that media use–mostly TV use–was a major factor in our diminishing sense of close connections with others. As we have spoken to various groups around the country, some have asked us a question that goes something like this: "Don’t you think that we’re watching less TV now because of the Internet?" We see some skeptical faces when we report that actually we’re not watching any less TV. Instead, we’re just adding our Internet time to our TV time. New statistics just released by the A.C. Nielson Company (the industry standard for measuring media use) show that we’re actually increasing BOTH TV time and Internet time. Over the last year, we’ve INCREASED our TV viewing for the average person by 4% to an average of 142 hours per month. Internet time has increased by 6%. Will we ever be able to reverse this trajectory that we’ve been on since TV first appeared in the late 1940s? We believe that these new statistics are symptomatic of our increasing social isolation and our loss of close, "refrigerator rights" friends. Perhaps this holiday season is a good time to consider giving a copy of the book to your family and friends and begin a discussion of how we can think of creative ways to restore our close relationships. As the material in the book testifies, our daily health and happiness are at stake. (You can read about the new statistics on media use at this web site–www.thrfeed.com/2008/11/nielsen-tv-use.html–just don’t spend too much time doing it!)

Tags: Uncategorized // Add Comment »

When we first published the book, Refrigerator Rights in 2002, Will Miller and I were convinced that our need for close relationships was well established by the best science of the time. We were also convinced that our major problem of social isolation was being exacerbated by our mobility and our heavy reliance on media technology. This week, a new book titled, "Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection" by a University of Chicago social psychologist provides an in-depth view of the latest scientific evidence on loneliness. The author, John Cacioppo, was interviewed on National Public Radio (http://www.wamu.org/audio/dr/08/08/r2080826-21212.asx). If you’re looking for a deeper treatment of the science that supports the arguments in Refrigerator Rights, we certainly recommend that you take a look at this book. While Will and I are not surprised in the least that the best scientific data available points in the same direction as our thesis, you might find the actual details to be fascinating and compelling. We’re gratified that the scientific community has arrived at such a strong consensus on our need for close relationships. Now that we know how important these relationships are, we need to get busy cultivating these relationships in our daily life. Let us know how you’re doing.  

Tags: Uncategorized // Add Comment »

Tags: Research, Insight // Add Comment »

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

In America, we’ve perpetuated the strong belief that if we could just find that one "perfect" person to be our life-long mate, all of our relational and emotional needs would be met and we’d live happily ever after. Since publishing Refrigerator Rights, Will Miller and I have cautioned against blind acceptance of this myth. We’ve warned that no single person is capable of meeting the totality of another’s relational and emotional needs. Human beings are wired for close connection to a whole range of relationship types: fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, brothers and sisters, aunts & uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, etc.  Regardless of the closeness of the marriage bond, both partners still need close friends and family-type relationships to sustain them throughout life. In fact, we believe that marriages that are characterized by a rich network of "refrigerator rights" friends are actually much healthier, more vibrant, and likely to last.

But there is also a caution on the flip-side of this equation. As we point out in the book, for decades, America’s lifestyle has drifted into one of increasing isolation due to our high mobility–and an increasing tendency to surround ourselves with screens. Now, it seems, our trend toward isolation is also beginning to permeate into the marriage relationship itself. As Sue Shellenbarger notes in her recent column in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121495841914021501.html), a team of researchers at Penn State University has studied over 4,000 married people over the last 20-years. Shellenbarger states that, "They found that the likelihood of couples spending lots of time together visiting friends, pursuing recreational activities, dining or shopping together, or teaming up on projects around the house, fell 28%." We think there’s little doubt that if we spend less and less time together, our marriages will be less healthy. If you’re married, you might want to take a personal inventory, note the trends over the past few years–and then plan to do something together with your partner. Doing something together–but also something with other people–might be a particularly wise investment of time. It will put you together with your partner and simultaneously permit you to cultivate friends and close connections with others.  

Tags: Research, Insight // Add Comment »

Tuesday, July 1 - 2008

When we wrote Refrigerator Rights, we concluded with these words of advice for people who were wondering how they were going to re-establish close connection with others: "…you know what to do." Apparently, Peter Lovenheim, an op-ed contributor to the New York Times wasn’t quite sure. As he writes in his recent article (www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/opinion/23lovenheim.html), he had become so isolated from those in his neighborhood that he knew he needed to do something to change things–but he wasn’t sure just what.  He recalled the fun of "sleep-overs" as a child and so he actually started contacting his neighbors to ask them if he could come sleep over–get to know them better–and possibly write about them in his new book on neighborhoods. More than half of the 18 neighbors he asked said, "yes." He writes that his teenage daughter shouted, "Dad, you’re crazy" as he left the house one night with his sleeping bag tucked under his arm to make the short journey down the street. While we’d surely admit that Mr. Lovenheim’s strategy was unorthodox, we think he deserves a "refrigerator rights creativity award." The challenges that face us today as we struggle with increasing social isolation are so acute that they demand creative and unorthodox solutions. We’re in the process of collecting examples of how people made creative break-throughs to reconnect with others. If you have a story, please share it with us. We’re confident that you don’t have to ask your neighbors to sleep over in order to get to know them better–but we need to do something. As we argue in the book, the costs of not doing anything are too great–and the benefits of doing something are more than we can imagine before we do it. Just ask Peter Lovenheim. 

Tags: Research, Insight, RR Anecdotes // Add Comment »

 Monday, June 30th - 2008

The Pew Research Center just released a new report based on a survey of "Baby-Boomers"–those born between 1946-1964. (See this link for the story: pewresearch.org/pubs/880/baby-boomers-the-gloomiest-generation ). The focus of the report was on the current mood of the Boomers–which is decidedly "downbeat." Even though the Boomers have higher incomes than any other demographic group, they are more likely to worry about their incomes keeping up with inflation–and they rate their overall quality of life as lower than those who are either younger or older. You might think that this downcast view of things is simply related to the fact that the Boomers are getting older. But, apparently, that’s not the case. This latest report simply affirms something that has been true of the Boomers for the last two decades. 

The report attempts to speculate about the reasons for the Boomers’ outlook. While it is difficult to know for sure what the various causes might be, we think it makes sense that one of the contributing causes could be related to a lifestyle of diminishing "Refrigerator Rights" friends. The Boomers are the ones who have taken the full hit of America’s chronic mobility. They are also the generation who saw the rise of TV and have integrated hours of daily screen-time into their personal habits. Could it be that the downcast attitudes of the Boomers reveal the need for closer connections with others that have gradually been lost over the past few decades of American life? We think it’s definitely a possibility worth contemplating.

Tags: Research // Add Comment »

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

A cool new study has demonstrated that friendly people are healthier people! An article in the Health Behavior News Service by Joan Hennessy confirms what we suspect intuitively, that  having a “sense  of belonging and community participation (are) each significantly associated with health outcomes.”

This means that having a detached, resistant and separated lifestyle cuts you off from the the physical benefits that being connected provides.

Check out this compelling article

Tags: Research, Insight // Add Comment »

Check out this link about the Slow Movement.

Is there are more common complaint about modern life than the maddening pace we are living?

This is a cool response to that!

Tags: Links, RR Anecdotes // Add Comment »

Friday, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

A recent study in England documented a recent trend where older, retired man had essentially lost contact with their children and other in general. One of the sad anecdotes told of a son who took out an ad seeking a “male friend” for his lonely, 80-year-old father. He was willing to pay $15 an hour to have someone go to a local pub with his dad to share a pint and some good conversation. This is how far we have come.

For 15 years I have devoted my professional life to speaking about the problem of social isolation, which is, I believe a crisis in the culture, brought about by the combination of relocation and media use. Every year in the United States over 40 million people move, and in an average week we are watching 28 hours of television! The predictable result of such a lifestyle is increased separation not only from our primary relationships like family and neighbors, but worse, perpetual disconnection from whoever is around us. And with my colleague, Professor Glenn Sparks, we have written about this phenomenon in our book, Refrigerator Rights: Creating Connections and Restoring Relationships.

Today we had a meeting with a manager of a really outstanding retirement facility and discussed the problem of creating and sustaining a sense of community among the residents.  Some of the challenges are predictable, of course. Strong bonds of friendship are established only to face the loss of those friendships before very long. And this happens on top of the trauma many confront with the painful decision to give up their independence, and their home. Frequently their children and extended family live far away, and visits are rare.

But the seniors living entities care facilities also confront the problem that is felt throughout every age group in the culture. And that is that their lifestyle is often focused too narrowly on their age peer group with too little contact with individuals of other generations. The residents of this facility today spend most of their time with each other and have little or no contact with babies, adolescents or young adults. And each of those other constituencies in turn have minimal contact with people who are the age group of older siblings or grandparents. And we believe, and the research supports that this lifestyle so narrowly connected to her social peers is, quite frankly inadequate. A healthy lifestyle includes contact with as wide a variety of generational constituencies as possible. Babies thrive and develop as much from the influence of older siblings and cousins as they do from the love and care of their parents and the nurturing of their grandparents. In essence we have come to devalue, to our great detriment the influence of many voices, of many people who helped shape our character, and show us the way.

So whether you are a senior in assisted living, a busy couple raising kids a teenager immersed in the intense cauldron of the high school peer group or an eight-year-old soccer kid, to say that we need all of these others is more than a bromide, it is a health essential. Who populates your social circle? One of the demographics of your social support system? We all want friends; we all need a lot more.

Tags: Research, Insight // Add Comment »

Friday, Atlanta

I don’t have a lot of bad habits, but over the course of my lifetime I have occasionally been a cigarette smoker. I grew up in a time and in a family that was filled with cigarette smokers. My grandparents, parents and many of my aunts and uncles were smokers. Of course back then no one really thought very much about it, it was so common. This that anyone thought that smoking was good for you, it’s just that it was all around you all the time. So as a young adult, I too took up the nasty habit. And over the years of the periods of time where I smoked everyday and that would quit for years at a time. And quitting, as any smoker knows, is simply brutal.

I recall when I was working as a therapist in a drug clinic in New York City hearing a recovering heroin addict that the toughest addiction he ever had to confront was smoking! It is an amazing grip. And I can tell you that quitting as a solitary effort is indeed a high mountain to climb. And so I found it interesting, and relevant to refrigerator rights that a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that one of the most effective ways to break the smoking habit was to do so with friends and neighbors.

The study found that over the past few decades, as the percentage of people who smoked dropped from about 40% down to 20%, many testified that they did so at the same time as their friends or coworkers. As the researchers found “people linked in social networks tended to quit around the same time.” Further, “a smoker was 67 percent more likely to quit if a spouse did so, 36 percent more likely if a friend did so, and 25 percent more likely if a sibling did so.” But even more impressive was the impact that even casual friendships had on enabling people to break the habit.

Here we go again. The influence refrigerator rights relationships is so strong that it even has the power to overcome something as powerful as a cigarette addiction. The research support just keeps on coming in, wave after wave.

Tags: Research, Insight // 1 Comment »