What types of social interactions benefit people with social anxiety the most?

Human life unfolds through two fundamental modes of being: with others and alone. Social interactions permeate everyday life, and whether brief or prolonged, deep or superficial, face-to-face or online, these exchanges are the building blocks of our relationships. They play a vital role in our psychological and emotional wellbeing.

Contemporary research shows that the key to a rich social life is not how many interactions we have, but how meaningful and positive they are. It also suggests that the quality of a social interaction depends on both situational and individual factors, and how they combine.

Situational factors are the context that surrounds an interaction – whether it occurs face-to-face or virtually, in small or large groups, and with familiar or unfamiliar partners. Individual factors, such as personality traits, reflect the unique characteristics of the people involved.

With loneliness fast becoming a major mental health crisis, it is vital that we learn more about how to build meaningful relationships. Amid this panorama, people with social anxiety offer particularly useful insight into the way socialising works.

Interaction quality and energy

Social anxiety is a fear or discomfort that some people feel in real or imagined social situations. A common misconception is that socially anxious people struggle with all social interactions, and that they experience lower wellbeing because their anxiety makes their social encounters lower in quality and perceived enjoyment.

Energy expenditure also plays a huge part in social anxiety. Everyday social interactions require a certain amount of social energy. This is true for everybody, but for people who suffer from social anxiety, even routine interactions can be draining.

There is therefore a constant tension between two alternative forces: a fundamental need to belong – which is satisfied by meaningful, high-quality connections – and a need to manage energy levels. In the case of socially anxious individuals, the recurring fear of being judged during a conversation not only drains the joy out of the moment, it also makes the experience more exhausting.

Leer más: What’s the difference between shyness and social anxiety?

Finding the balance

Our study, published in February 2026, aimed to explore whether certain specific conditions are better for socially anxious people.

To address this question, we asked participants to keep a diary of social interactions. They reported their thoughts, feelings, and actions multiple times a day in real time.

This methodology differs from surveys that ask participants to recall past events. This often introduces memory bias and can leave out important details of social exchanges. Our method allowed us to capture organic daily interactions right after they occurred via short, structured questionnaires.

With a sample of 161 US American adults from the general population, we examined individual differences in self-reported social anxiety levels. To do this, we tracked the perceived quality and energy cost of social interactions in relation to three situational aspects. These were:

• Interaction channel: whether the interaction was face-to-face or digital (i.e., on a phone call, video chat or messaging app)

• Size: whether the interaction involved a small or a large group

• Familiarity: how often the participant interacted with the specific people involved. This measured the closeness of the relationships.

We found that the association between social anxiety and the quality of social interactions depends heavily on the situation.

Our analyses challenged the prevailing view that socially anxious individuals invariably struggle in everyday social interactions. Instead, they showed that they tend to experience more positive and meaningful exchanges in mediated and digital settings (compared to face-to-face) and within small groups (compared to larger gatherings).

The right fit

For people with social anxiety, interacting online or via messaging apps may reduce the intense pressure of real-time social cues and instant feedback. This can, for instance, alleviate performance-related anxiety, and give people a sense of greater control over how they communicate.

Smaller groups also lower the stakes: in a smaller setting, people often feel less judged and under less scrutiny. This allows for more playful, easy, and positive connections to form.

Interestingly, we found no significant link between familiarity and interaction quality. This may be due to how we measured familiarity. We defined it by how often people see each other, but the specific role of the interaction partner (such as a romantic partner, parent, or close friend) might matter much more.

It is also possible that the relationship between familiarity and interaction quality is not so simple. We usually assume that as familiarity goes down, social pressure and anxiety go up, but that might not be the case. Socially anxious people may actually feel less judgement with total strangers because those people are not a permanent part of their everyday social circle.

In this scenario, social anxiety would be triggered the most by interacting with people in the middle – acquaintances who are somewhat familiar, but not particularly close.

All in all, these findings challenge the traditional view that socially anxious people struggle across all situations and communication styles. Our study also offers valuable insights into how different environments can be tailored to fit diverse psychological needs – including for those who struggle with social anxiety.

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