Community

A community is a social unit with commonality such as norms, religion, values, customs, or identity.

Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighborhood) or in virtual space through communication platforms.

Durable relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties also define a sense of community, important to their identity, practice, and roles in social institutions such as family, home, work, government, society, or humanity at large.

Although communities are usually small relative to personal social ties, "community" may also refer to large group affiliations such as national communities, international communities, and virtual communities.

Human communities may have intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, and risks in common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

Four elements of "sense of community":

1. Membership: feeling of belonging or of sharing a sense of personal relatedness.

2. Influence: mattering, making a difference to a group and of the group mattering to its members.

3. Reinforcement: integration and fulfillment of needs.

4. Shared emotional connection.

Studies indicate that young adults who feel a sense of belonging in a community, particularly small communities, develop fewer psychiatric and depressive disorders than those who do not have the feeling of love and belonging.