An epidemic of loneliness is upon us.
There has long been discourse scattered throughout social media surrounding nostalgia for a place to socialize. This nostalgia is characteristic of Gen Z suburban residents, growing up increasingly isolated without places to socialize. As libraries and parks lose funding, people are losing spaces to connect. Social media has taken to romanticizing the aesthetics of 80s arcades and malls as well as 90s coffee shops as places to engage with the community. There is an increase in viewership of shows like Friends and Gilmore Girls, where people consistently hang out and form connections. As we lose the third space in reality, we are filling the void with a fourth space, the digital world.
Discourse on third spaces has recently entered the social media narrative. Originally coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his 1989 book, The Great Good Place, the concept of third spaces stems from the idea of separate physical sectors in one’s life. The first space is the home, the second space is work, and the third space is someplace where you can interact with other people and form connections outside the first and second spaces. The increase in third space-specific discourse is inextricably linked to the decline and longing for third spaces.
Children in suburbia are growing up without places to socialize. The suburbs are a capitalist brainchild—they are the ideal location to raise a family and still be close to work. They boast competition and individualism, pushing people to isolate themselves in their homes with new clothes and shiny toys to parade in front of their drooling neighbors. Perhaps this structure worked in the beginnings of suburbia, however, today’s realization of suburbanization has deadlocked modern Americans in a labyrinth of McMansions and minivans.
I grew up in a wing of this labyrinth and still struggle to find a space outside of school and my home. I do not have the luxury of a local coffee store or bookshop that is not a branch of some large corporation. I do not know the owners or patrons of these places, nor do they know me. I often retreat to the ‘local’ Barnes & Nobles (which in reality, is a twenty-minute drive from my house) when I crave socialization with my community. The only seating area in the store is in the Starbucks cafe, often occupied by remote workers taking meetings or finishing work. My ties to the community are eroding.
In the spring of 2023, the US Surgeon General released an advisory highlighting the dangers of loneliness. He claimed as we move towards an increasingly isolated society, furthered by the temptation to isolate with social media and cellphones, there is a rise in generalized anxiety and generalized depressive disorders. The only way out of the epidemic of loneliness is increased socialization. It is a movement towards increased funding of public parks and community centers and a focus on walkable communities maintained by members of that community. If we want to combat isolation, we need to untangle the binds of suburbia and connect.
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