Granovetter called close relationships with family and friends “strong ties.”
It’s intuitive that having strong ties promotes happiness. But he
proposed that having a wide circle of acquaintances and casual
social contacts (“weak ties”) offers different benefits. Weak ties,
he argued, allow for dissemination of ideas and opportunity, promote innovation, social mobility and community cohesion.
This hypothesis begat a whole body of research. (As with any influential idea,
it also had some distorted offshoots. Internet evangelists have called the number of social media followers on Instagram “weak ties” and proposed that the more “likes” and followers one has, the stronger one’s social bonds.
We are learning that it is the opposite: excessive engagement
on the Internet reinforces loneliness and alienation.)
The understanding of weak ties is returning to Granovetter’s original idea
(and he was writing 15 years before the invention of the Internet). Simple encounters throughout the day with neighbors, co-workers, store clerks have benefits for individuals and for communities. In one study, people who worked at weak—tie interactions, including such a simple thing as chatting with a cashier at Starbucks, reported feeling happier at the end of the day.
