As our adult children travel far and wide in pursuit of their own goals, it’s comforting to learn from a new research study that talking to them can reduce their stress (as measured by reductions in cortisol and increases in oxytocin). Girls between 7 and 12 years of age were assessed for cortisol and oxytocin after being asked to give impromptu speeches and solve math problems and receiving either no reassurance from their mother, in-person reassurance from their mother, or reassurance over a telephone from their mother.
Data from Selzer et al.
As you can see from the data, good old-fashioned, in-person contact with Mom (the red line) reduces cortisol faster, but hearing her voice gets you to the same low level one hour later.
This article raised some questions for us relative to our work on loneliness and social media. We have found that in-person interactions with friends and family were negatively correlated with loneliness, but that use of Facebook and telephones were not correlated with loneliness at all. We did not, however, distinguish between time spent actually “talking” on the telephone from time spent texting, which we obviously should do in light of Selzer et al.’s results and the habits of the college students we study. My students complain that they rarely actually use the phone to talk to people anymore, but end up texting instead. It’s possible that a texted “Mom loves you and everything is going to be all right” is not quite the same as hearing her voice say the same words, but it’s still a fair empirical question. It would also be helpful to know more about the relationship between these one-time stress-reducing episodes and pervasive loneliness. So many research questions–so little time.
As our adult children travel far and wide in pursuit of their own goals, it’s comforting to learn from a new research study that talking to them can reduce their stress (as measured by reductions in cortisol and increases in oxytocin). Girls between 7 and 12 years of age were assessed for cortisol and oxytocin after being asked to give impromptu speeches and solve math problems and receiving either no reassurance from their mother, in-person reassurance from their mother, or reassurance over a telephone from their mother.
Data from Selzer et al.
As you can see from the data, good old-fashioned, in-person contact with Mom (the red line) reduces cortisol faster, but hearing her voice gets you to the same low level one hour later.
This article raised some questions for us relative to our work on loneliness and social media. We have found that in-person interactions with friends and family were negatively correlated with loneliness, but that use of Facebook and telephones were not correlated with loneliness at all. We did not, however, distinguish between time spent actually “talking” on the telephone from time spent texting, which we obviously should do in light of Selzer et al.’s results and the habits of the college students we study. My students complain that they rarely actually use the phone to talk to people anymore, but end up texting instead. It’s possible that a texted “Mom loves you and everything is going to be all right” is not quite the same as hearing her voice say the same words, but it’s still a fair empirical question. It would also be helpful to know more about the relationship between these one-time stress-reducing episodes and pervasive loneliness. So many research questions–so little time.
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