Dr. Marisa Franco
speaker
59 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Dr. Marisa Franco’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Like me sharing what I'm struggling with, me sharing my relationship issues, me sharing even what has put me in a bad mood today. It's me sharing information that... It's me sharing information that we're in. I might feel like you can use it against me or I might feel like if you don't respond positively to this information, I'm going to be particularly affected by that.
And that's why when people do respond positively, it really builds our sense of trust with them.
Absolutely. And I wanted to share that it's absolutely normal to go through these breakups with friends. And actually every seven years we lose about half our friends. Interestingly, also about half of our friends don't consider us their friends. So that's technically not a friendship because friendship is founded on reciprocity.
And so because of that, I think generally we can think that friendships are going to fall away. What we do know from the research is that the longer a friendship has lasted, the more likely it is to continue to last. But in general, we will be losing friends throughout our lifespan.
Yeah, yeah. Half our friends don't reciprocate the friendship. Isn't that sad?
You know, it just happens. I guess people have different definitions of what they might consider a friend. And so it's hard, I think, for us to put our finger on. And that's one of the, I would say, the difficulties of friendship. It's so ambiguous, right?
We don't have the sort of proof that someone's invested in us like we might have with someone who's married or we share blood with, which is why I think friendship can really bring out some of our insecurities.
Yeah, so it's a really mixed bag in the research, I would say, because social media's link with loneliness really depends on how you use it. If you're someone who uses social media to facilitate in-person interaction, you're sliding in someone's DMs on Instagram to be like, let's hang out, you're gonna be less lonely. But if you use it to replace in-person interaction,
If you're just interacting with people over social media and you're not seeing people in real life, then it's going to make you more lonely. You know, interestingly, I would say when we take a step back and look at the larger research on this topic, that social media has been a net negative for our connections, because actually in 2012, there was a stark increase in loneliness.
especially for people between the ages of 18 and 24. In 2012, people between the ages of 18 and 24 had the best mental health of any age group, and now they have the worst. And what happened in 2012? That was the popularization of the smartphone.
Yeah, it's really fascinating. These smartphone usage, especially for the younger generations, have been found to decrease their level of empathy because we develop empathy through looking into someone's eyes. And so when we're not doing that, we can't really read other people's feelings, which is so key to being able to connect with people.
I kind of mentioned this, but I wanted to just sort of bring out this theme. And my read of the research is that in general, the world is a lot safer than what we assume and what we predict. I already talked about the liking gap, wherein researchers found that when strangers interact, they underestimate how much the other person is to like them.
There's also a phenomenon called the beautiful mess effect, which basically finds that when When we're vulnerable, we think people are judging us more than they actually are, and we underestimate how positively they're perceiving us when we're vulnerable.
Similarly, when we share affection, we assume it'll come off as more awkward than it will, and we discount how much other people will appreciate it and be thankful for it. And so in general, I think making friends feels like a risk. And it is a risk. Intimacy is a risk. We might be rejected. But it's actually far less likely. It's far less risky than we think it is.
And so I want to encourage anybody who's listening today and is scared to ask someone to hang out who they think is really cool that, hey, they actually might be a lot more likely to be open to it than you think, particularly at a time like now when so many of us have lost friends in the pandemic and are even more open to wanting to connect with you.
Yeah, and that's real. I think when you're making friends, inevitably you face the risk of rejection, right? And I see rejection as a friendship expert. I really see rejection as a good thing because if you're curating the life that you really want, if you're going for the people that you really want to be part of your social network, inevitably rejection is a consolation prize for that.
So if you're getting rejected, that means you're initiating. That means you're going for the people that you really want relationship with. that means you're really curating your life.
So at the end of the day, like if you're building the skill of initiating, if you're putting yourself out there, if you're living up to your values, I see it as a success, even if the outcome isn't what you hoped for.
Thank you so much for having me, Mike. Looking forward to listening to the episode.
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