On any given evening, the glow of a smartphone is hard to miss – on sidewalks, in coffee shops, on college campuses and at kitchen tables across Chattanooga.
Messages arrive in quick bursts: a meme, a GIF from a favorite comedy sketch, a reminder about dinner plans, a photo of someone’s dog wearing sunglasses.
For many people, those exchanges happen inside group chats.
The messages are often trivial. But communication scholar Brandon Bouchillon thinks those everyday exchanges might matter more than they seem.
Bouchillon, the West Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, studies how technology can be used in prosocial ways – to build connection, trust, empathy and community.
At a time when digital communication is often blamed for loneliness and polarization, Bouchillon says he tries to push past research that focuses only on the internet’s downsides.
“We tend to be drawn to negative implications of the internet and social media,” he says. “There’s all this talk about how it’s going to ruin the world. I don’t dispute that entirely, but I try to push past it and look for ways of using media applications in more targeted ways to benefit people socially.”
His interest in digital social support began more than a decade ago when he was a doctoral student at Texas Tech University and he and his wife were expecting their first child.
Like many first-time parents, Bouchillon says, they had plenty of questions and anxieties about what lay ahead. Around that time, his wife joined a Facebook group for women expecting their first child. The group quickly became a place where people shared worries, advice and encouragement.
“They shared their fears and supported each other,” Bouchillon recalls. “She’s still connected with a number of them.”
Some of the women stayed in touch for years afterward and even sent birthday gifts to the couple’s daughter.
Watching that support network form among people who had never met in person left a lasting impression on him, Bouchillon says. It also helped spark his interest in how digital communication can reinforce social support.
That curiosity eventually led him to study group texting and its potential connection to well-being.
One example appears in his study “Group Texting and Subjective Well-Being,” which looks at how participation in group texting relates to emotional well-being and life satisfaction.
A different take on tech
Bouchillon says most conversations about technology start with its risks.
In the introduction to his paper, he writes that indicators of mental health have declined in the United States since the early 2000s. Younger Americans in particular have reported drops in emotional well-being and life satisfaction.
Against that backdrop, Bouchillon’s research asks a different question: could some forms of digital communication actually help people stay connected?
In the study, Bouchillon analyzed survey responses from 1,500 U.S. adults to see whether participation in group texting – defined as ongoing text conversations among at least three people – was linked to emotional well-being and life satisfaction.
The study found that people who took part in group texting tended to report higher emotional well-being and life satisfaction.
The results also varied by age and digital communication competence – a measure of how comfortable and skilled people feel when using digital communication tools.
According to the study, the positive connection between group texting and emotional well-being was strongest among younger participants and among people who felt confident using digital technology.
Because the data were collected at one point in time, Bouchillon notes in the paper that the study can’t prove that group texting directly causes improvements in well-being. Still, the findings line up with a large body of research showing that strong social relationships play an important role in emotional health.
“Social relationships are strongly associated with emotional well-being,” Bouchillon says. “Communication technologies give us new ways to maintain those relationships.”
The power of casual communication
Part of the appeal of group texting, Bouchillon says, is how easy and informal it can be.
In the study, he notes that group texting lets people reply right away or jump into the conversation later when they have time. That flexibility, he writes, makes participation easier.
Bouchillon says the conversations inside group chats are not always deep or serious.
“Texting isn’t necessarily this deep heart-to-heart every time,” he says. “It’s more like a steady drip of informal social support.”
That description fits how many group chats actually work. Conversations often revolve around jokes, small updates or shared cultural references.
Bouchillon points to his own group chats with friends and family members, where humor is often the main currency.
“My friends and I send a lot of GIFs from the show ‘I Think You Should Leave,’” he says with a laugh. “It’s silly stuff.”
Even those lighthearted exchanges can matter, he says, because they remind people that supportive relationships are close at hand.
“You’re reminded that you have social support you can draw on,” Bouchillon says. “That can boost you emotionally and mentally.”
The decline of third places
Bouchillon says these everyday digital habits connect to a broader discussion among sociologists about declining community interaction in the United States.
As a doctoral student, he says he was influenced by political scientist Robert Putnam, whose book “Bowling Alone” argued that Americans had become increasingly disconnected from civic and community life.
Putnam wrote that participation in clubs, neighborhood organizations and other forms of civic activity had steadily declined.
Urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg made a related argument about the importance of “third places” – informal gathering spots such as coffee shops, bars and bowling alleys where people spend time outside home and work.
Both scholars warned that modern life is slowly eroding opportunities for casual social interaction.
Putnam pointed to television as one reason people began spending more time at home. Today, Bouchillon says, many critics make a similar argument about the internet and smartphones.
But he believes digital communication can also be used in ways that strengthen relationships.
“If we can use media like group chats in targeted ways, we can still develop and maintain social connections,” he says.
Those connections, he continues, might sometimes spill back into the physical world by supporting the relationships that make in-person conversations possible.
Generational differences
Age also plays a role in how people experience group texting.
The study found that younger adults participate in group texting more often than older adults. Younger participants also reported higher levels of communication competence when using digital technologies.
At the same time, older adults in the survey reported higher overall levels of emotional well-being and life satisfaction.
In the paper’s literature review, Bouchillon notes prior research suggesting that older adults often prefer face-to-face interaction because its emotional impact tends to be stronger and more immediate.
The study also found that the positive association between group texting and emotional well-being weakened with age but strengthened among people who felt confident using digital communication tools.
In the discussion section of the paper, Bouchillon suggests that digital communication might complement traditional forms of interaction rather than replace them.
Fighting the doomscroll
Bouchillon says digital technology does not always produce positive experiences.
One common habit, he says, is doomscrolling – endlessly scrolling through negative news and social media posts.
He admits he occasionally falls into the habit himself. But he contrasts doomscrolling with simply chatting with friends and family.
“If I push past doomscrolling and chat with my friends or family,” he says, “I get a sense that we’re in this together.”
For Bouchillon, the contrast highlights a simple point: technology depends a lot on how people use it.
Passive consumption of bad news can heighten anxiety, he says. Conversations with trusted friends and family can have the opposite effect.
A return to conversation
Ironically, Bouchillon hopes digital communication might eventually help revive some of the spontaneous conversations that once happened more often in everyday life.
He sometimes sees hints of that possibility thanks to his 5-year-old son.
When the family stands in line at the grocery store, Bouchillon says, he often keeps to himself. His son, however, eagerly strikes up conversations with strangers.
At first, Bouchillon says, he feels reluctant to join in. But over time those interactions have come to represent something valuable.
“That’s the good stuff we’re missing,” he says.
If research on communication technologies can help rebuild trust and empathy, Bouchillon says, those kinds of everyday conversations might become more common again.
For now, he sees the group chat as a small but meaningful form of connection.
The messages are rarely profound and conversations might drift from jokes to logistics to shared cultural references.
But in Bouchillon’s view, those exchanges still reinforce the relationships that support emotional well-being.
They remind participants that friends, family members and classmates remain present in their lives, even when distance or busy schedules make in-person meetings difficult.
And in a world full of alarming headlines and digital distractions, Bouchillon says even a stream of friendly messages can be a subtle reminder that connection still exists.