Do this just once a day and you’ll be happier, study says

Hey, bestie!

Do you talk to your best friend every day? Well, perhaps you should.

Having just one quality conversation with a bud per day could boost your well-being, according to a paper published in SAGE Journals.

Scientists identified seven common types of communication: catching up, meaningful talk, joking around, showing care, listening, valuing others and their opinions, and offering sincere compliments. In one study that the paper reviewed, more than 900 people were asked to engage in one of those forms of communication or behaviors in a single day.

The participants were then asked to self-report their feelings of things like stress, connection, anxiety, well-being and loneliness to determine their overall well-being.

The study found that those who engaged in any type of communication throughout their day reported higher qualities of well-being and happiness, especially increased feelings of connection and decreased stress, compared to those who ghosted their friends that day.

“This study suggests that anyone who makes time for high-quality conversation can improve their well-being. We can change how we feel on any given day through communication,” said study co-writer Jeffrey Hall, a University of Kansas professor of communication studies. “Just once is all it takes.”

Those chatty Kathys who chose to have more than one quality conversation a day had even better results.

“This means the more that you listened to your friends, the more that you showed care, the more that you took time to value others’ opinions, the better you felt at the end of the day,” the friendship expert explained.

The new research built on Hall’s previous work on the impact of different forms of communication, from texting your bestie with all the good tea to sitting down with them for a cathartic conversation.

“If at least one of their quality conversations was face-to-face, that mattered,” Hall said, while also noting that any form of communication is better than none.

According to his Communicate Bond Belong theory, quality communication boosts a person’s well-being, as people use conversations with friends to help meet their intrinsic need to belong.

“Across these three studies, quality conversation mattered most for connection and stress,” Hall said. “This supports the idea that we use communication to get our need to belong met, and, in doing so, it helps us manage our stress.”  

The benefits of friendship are increasingly highlighted as important, as research shows that Americans — especially men — have fewer friends than ever, and teenagers are experiencing record-high levels of dangerously poor mental health.

Just last year, outgoing New York City health commissioner Dr. Dave A. Chokshi declared “an epidemic of loneliness” amid reports that forlorn feelings had skyrocketed following pandemic-related lockdowns.

Experts hope that those worrying issues will decline as people continue returning to their pre-pandemic social activities and in-person events.

But if you’re still stuck working from home or haven’t seen your bestie for whatever reason, this may be a sign to plan a coffee date or make a surprise FaceTime call.