The Role of New Social Ties in Creating Meaningful Life

Abstract

This article suggests that communities and social ties support the feeling of being meaningful. The theoretical concepts discussed here are social capital, community, and new forms of social ties. The data consists of 969 answers from citizens of different ages from three cities. Despite the possibilities of new global social ties, Finns seem to be quite traditional when it comes to a meaningful life: the sources of communality are “old communities” such as work, work communities, families, and relatives. The self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) fits well with Finns: it is important to recognize personal competence. Nevertheless, it is not enough to be competent: people need to be related to others but also have enough autonomy among others. After covid-19 and the period of enforced remote work, we need new ways to build communality and relatedness in creating and maintaining traditional and new social ties.