SOCIAL REMEDIA

I was 11 or 12 when I first caught the writing bug.  Having struggled with my reading through the early years of Primary School, I had eventually discovered a hack to massively boost my test results, and therefore my confidence, so by the time I entered ‘big school’ I had ideas aplenty but no outlet for my burgeoning energies.  It eventually came in the form of the Year One literary magazine, ‘BD1’ (subsequently ‘BD2’) which was edited, hand-printed and stapled together by the former window-cleaner/bingo-caller who had been tasked with teaching ‘English’ to thirty-odd hormone-crazed teenage boys. Between the magazine and the man himself I succeeded in making my first fledgeling forays into poetry and short-form fiction, and once again praise and prizes boosted my confidence levels stratospherically. But the greatest honour, by a country mile, was when my teacher asked me to read some of his work. He’d just finished a new poem and wanted some feedback, a role reversal that I found both deeply moving and quite shocking at the same time. We talked through the poem together in the lunch hour, or rather I talked and he listened, and then he explained that the fifty-or-so lines comprised his total literary output for that year. This rendered my twelve-year-old self totally speechless. How could someone so obviously talented produce so little work? Well he was teaching full time of course. And had a young family. Plus a thesis to write on aspects of comedy in early Icelandic literature. But even so… Then he said something that totally mystified me:  “But David, you don’t understand. Without the teaching work, and the social interaction it gives me, I probably wouldn’t be able to write at all.”

Last week I was on deadline for a project.  I was making great headway, and, as the weekend advanced towards me, I saw from my much neglected calendar that there were not one but two musical events that I really wanted to attend. One was a kind of breakthrough gig for one of the finest singer-songwriters I’d heard in ages, the other, involving a train ride and hotel stay, would  showcase three of the most outstanding acts currently performing on the UK grass roots circuit. Unfortunately, both would involve stepping away from the keyboard and quite possibly losing the momentum I’d worked so hard to build up. So I’d do neither, right? Wrong!  I decided on the away-day gig and it was beyond brilliant… six hours of great music, great company and great memories.  Travelling back to London the next morning, in the company several thousand jubilant Arsenal fans, I felt several kilos lighter and about a decade younger. And surprise, surprise, when I sat back at my keyboard, the paragraphs, and the hours, just flew by …easily (and almost effortlessly) doubling the daily word count of the previous week.

But am I alone in this, i.e. working better when spending less time alone?  At least one scientific paper would suggest not.*

‘The Social Is What We Do, and Thinking is for Doing

In the Introduction we discussed how an alien visiting from another planet would be impressed by the amount of time people spends doing things with other people. What is important to note is that such an alien could pay us a visit now, could have visited 50,000 years ago, or 2 million years ago (in the time of Homo Habilis) and in all cases be impressed by the role of social relations in peoples’ lives. Social  connections are at the core of primate life and are central to human survival strategy.  Given the continual and tonic role of social interaction in people’s lives, more specifically, the necessity to navigate a complex web of social relations in a mixed-motive world, it makes sense that our brains and minds would be very sensitive and responsive to that dimension of experience. Research in evolutionary biology has shown, for example, that the size of the primate neocortex is better predicted by how cognitively taxing a primate’s species social environment is (as reflected in group size) rather than the demands of the physical ecology… The social readiness of people’s minds makes sense given that people’s cognitive abilities many times operate in the service of social co-ordination and staying socially connected. In turn, social interaction and relationships not only sharpen our knowledge and social skills but also strengthen the cognitive processes that underlie those skills, which may then ready people for greater connection and effectiveness in dealing with others. Thus, an important outcome of social interaction appears to be mental sharpness, which may in itself play a central role in helping us enjoy the many other benefits that come from being socially connected.  Think many times is for being social, and being social supports our thinking.’

The approach certainly worked for my teacher back then.  There was no ‘BD3’ Magazine the following year because he left the school, reportedly after having a hit on Broadway and replacing those vital social interactions of the classroom by purchasing a factory and converting it into a theatre.

So off to the pub now I think!

DT

4^th June 2026