Overall Life Satisfaction Is More Related to Offline Than Online Social Interaction Satisfaction: Evidence From Germany and the US

There is growing interest in the research question of how life satisfaction can be achieved in a digital world. According to several psychological theories, one of the most relevant inner needs for people is having sufficient social interactions with others. Such social interactions happen more and more online these days. Therefore, in the present work, we investigated how much satisfaction with one’s own social interactions in the offline vs. online world contributes to overall life satisfaction. In the US, we observed in a final sample of N = 283 participants that overall life satisfaction was more robustly associated with offline than online social interaction satisfaction (difference in correlations of 0.103). In Germany, we observed the same pattern in a final sample of N = 266 participants, but the difference between the associations was a bit smaller. Please note that the samples differed in key characteristics and were chosen to find replication in the preregistered lead hypothesis despite differences in sociodemographics and cultural background. We further investigated associations with the Big Five of Personality, with a focus on extraversion. Overall, the study findings hint toward the importance of taking our evolutionary heritage in a digital era seriously and to foster sufficiently satisfying social interactions in the offline world.