What type of “me-time” is more restorative to a person — hiking by yourself deep in a forest, or reading a book while sipping a latte in a coffee shop?
Surprisingly, you’ll do best with a cup of joe and a good book, alone with yourself while surrounded by people, a new study published recently in the journal PLOS One found.
Intense episodes of complete isolation aren’t as likely to benefit a person’s well-being as me-time that maintains some social connectedness.
“We learned that less complete solitude is more likely to restore energy and maintain a feeling of connection with others,” lead researcher Morgan Quinn Ross, an assistant professor of communications with Oregon State University, said in a university news release.
“In a world where social interaction is almost always just a click away, we need to understand how to balance social interaction with different types of solitude,” Ross added.
For the study, researchers surveyed nearly 900 people regarding their mental health, preferred type of solitude and social interactions.
The research team specifically assessed the conditions under which a person’s me-time might be intruded upon by people or technology, causing time alone to become more social in nature.
Results show that less complete forms of solitude, like playing a game on your phone or going to a movie by yourself, offer some advantages over a solitary drive in the desert or writing in a secluded cabin.
A commonly held theory called Communicate Bond Belong has considered me-time as a sort of tradeoff, researchers said.
Social interaction builds relatedness with others, but at the expense of social energy — a person’s capacity for social interaction. On the other hand, solitude restores social energy at the cost of relatedness.
But the new study results indicate that it’s more complicated than that.
“Our study suggests that solitude is in fact not the flipside of social interaction,” Ross explained.
“Whereas more intense social interaction yields connection but depletes energy, more intense solitude depletes both energy and connection,” Ross continued. “Solitude does not seem to function simply as a way to regain energy used in social interaction.”
Interestingly, these findings held true for both extroverts and introverts, researchers said.
However, complete solitude can be beneficial for people who think it helps them restore energy and maintain connection, regardless of how much energy they pour into their social connections.
“If you have a positive attitude toward solitude — because you use it to restore energy and know that you will be able to connect with people later — then choosing solitude will probably make you feel better,” Ross said.
“But if you choose solitude because of a negative attitude toward social interaction — because you don't want to talk to people -- it will probably make you feel worse,” Ross concluded.