Bradley HamnerFounder, BlueprintOS · Founder - Above the Business & BlueprintOS

Social Skills in a Digital Business World with Henna Pryor

Name: Social Skills in a Digital Business World with Henna Pryor
Uploaded: 2024-05-28T16:00:50+00:00
Duration: 57 s
Channel: Bradley Hamner
Description: In this segment, Henna Pryor cites recent research by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who observed that teens and young adults are increasingly unable…

28 May 2024 · 1 min

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In this segment, Henna Pryor cites recent research by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who observed that teens and young adults are increasingly unable to hold comfortable face‑to‑face conversations because they spend most of their lives online. Pryor expands the idea to a broader population, describing a decline in "social fitness"—the strength of our social muscles—as both younger people and professionals working in hybrid environments lose the everyday, messy friction of constant physical proximity. The loss of regular in‑person interaction, whether among friends, customers, or colleagues, is portrayed as a systemic weakening of social skills that affects entrepreneurs, business owners, and employees alike.

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I was writing the book, the research was starting to pour out. This is not in the book because it's new research, but it just came out. US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy just returned from a research trip to the UK where he was studying young adults, and he found that young adults, teens and young adults, are actually now struggling to have conversations in the physical world because they are so used to living their lives online. And so when I think about awkwardness, I think about our social fitness. Our social muscles are atrophying, are weakening. And this is not just young adults. This is folks that now work in hybrid environments, whether they're entrepreneurs, business owners who work with their customers hybrid. We don't have the same proximity in our structures that we used to, which means we're losing the natural friction, the natural messiness that comes with constantly being around each other in real life, which is creating even more weakening of this social muscle.