A recent study found that certain types of communication with family, friends, and classmates/coworkers are more beneficial for mental health than others. In particular, face-to-face communication correlates most with good mental health with texting communication following in second place. These links to better mental health were even stronger than physical and outdoor activity. Interestingly, video conferencing (i.e. Zoom or Facetime) and telephone communication were not strongly linked with good mental health.
From this study, we can learn to intentionally seek to have communication with the people we care about in-person face-to-face and we can put more effort into keeping up with text communication with the individuals we love the most. Group texting can cause more stress and the study focused on texting with individuals only.