Book Summary: The Village Effect, Pinker Susan PhD. (2014), Random House, Canada
From the book jacket, a motivating description caught my eye: “award-winning author and psychologist, Susan Pinker shows how face-to-face contact is crucial for learning, happiness, resilience and longevity. Marrying the findings of the new field of social neuroscience with gripping human stories, Susan Pinker explores the impact of contact from cradle to grave”.
In preparation for a workshop on Parenting in a Digital Age, I read with enthusiasm, Pinker’s research about the impact of social media on our most important relationships. She points out that our electronic networks are larger and the size of our face-to-face social networks has stayed roughly the same but the number of people that we feel close to is shrinking. Being disconnected from steadfast relationships predisposes us to overblown biological reactions to stress which by disrupting gene pathways that suppress tumour growth add to the factors which extinguish some forms of breast cancer. The mounting evidence that a rich network of face-to-face relationships creates a biological force field against disease is compelling as I think about the importance of “real” three dimensional time with whom I feel emotionally safe and visa-versa.
A must read, as we consider the impact of “connecting to a crowd – a numberless multitude of people, of whom, no one is close, no one is distant”.
ISBN 978-0-307-35953
