On May 27, 2021 — 17 years after the final episode aired — millions tuned in to the Friends: The Reunion for a dose of sweet nostalgia. Collectively, we were just over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, and after months in and out of lockdowns, social distancing, masks, and Zoom calls, it was refreshing to see the gang gathered together on the set of Central Perk again. It might have been shameless fan-service, but it was also comforting in a familiar sort of way.
Sitcoms (situational comedies) often employ some casual meeting place that serves to group its characters together. The cast of How I Met Your Mother drank at MacLaren’s Pub, Saved by the Bell’s teens headed to The Max after school, and the Seinfeld quartet frequented Monk’s Cafe. These locations all represent what sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined “the third place,” which differentiates it from the first place (home) and the second place (work). The third place is some other community nexus between home and work where people can gather. They’re community hubs and places of social connection — and it turns out they’re very important for society. So why, you may ask, am I writing about them? Well, it’s because we’re losing them at an alarming rate, and the consequences are alarming.
“Third Places” and why we need them
In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. General Vivek Murthy released an 81-page advisory titled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” The report identified worrying trends of social disconnection, pointed out several root causes, and outlined “Six Pillars to Advance Social Connection.” This phenomenon is not contained to America. Canada is culturally similar in many respects, and is experiencing this crisis in its own borders. While the rise in rates of social isolation, anxiety, and depression were supercharged by COVID-19, the swift uptick began a decade earlier.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been tracking the data on this for years, and his two most recent books, The Coddling of the American Mind* and The Anxious Generation, lay out a persistent and troubling trend among children and young people in Western nations. Older Canadians are feeling the effects, too. Last year, a study released by the National Institute on Ageing (NIA) reported that 53 per cent of Canadians aged 65–79 were either “somewhat” or “very” lonely.
We’re also becoming more tribal. David R. Samson, an associate professor of biological anthropology at the University of Toronto, describes tribalism’s paradoxical nature in the Globe and Mail: “Outside of the group, it is acceptable to be compassionate toward those who share identity signals that foster co-operation, but it is also acceptable to dehumanize and use violence against out-groups when resources are limited.”
Human beings are social animals. We need other people for our mental and physical health. Research shows that in terms of mortality, the loneliness we experience from social disconnection equates to the negative health impact of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and is even more harmful than physical inactivity. It’s such a problem for our societies that it’s been taken up by the World Health Organization (WHO). According to their website, “The WHO Commission on Social Connection (2024–2026) aims to see the issue recognised and resourced as a global public health priority.”
This epidemic is sweeping and multifaceted, but one ingredient that lies at the heart of the matter is the societal divestiture from “third places.”
The endless draw of convenience
When Amazon was established in 1994 as an online book retailer, nobody could have predicted that three decades later, its founder would be rocketing billionaires into space while its employees relieve themselves into used water bottles. Now, the company is virtually omnipresent; and it has a ravenous appetite. As it grew, it didn’t stop at eating its digital rivals, and began gobbling up brick-and-mortar stores too. Why go to Sears, Eaton’s, or Zellers when you can find everything online, checkout from the toilet, and get it delivered to your home for free the next day?
I’m one of these people. Most of us are in some ways. If humans are good at anything, it’s making life more convenient for ourselves. The decline of third places takes many forms, but one of them is our inclination to be idle. If we resolve to put effort into something, we want to know that the energy being invested has a payoff. So what’s the virtue in getting dressed, dealing with traffic, finding a parking spot, and navigating a mall just to potentially emerge empty-handed? At that moment, those are all just obstacles standing between you and your new hair dryer.
The digital revolution has totally upended modern commerce. When Apple started selling individual songs on iTunes, they probably didn’t do so with the intention of putting a whole music retail industry out of business. Similarly, when Netflix started mailing DVDs to customers, they likely didn’t predict that they would relegate Blockbuster to the halls of extinction. Once those dominoes start falling, they don’t stop. Technology is always improving and innovating. Digital music downloads are great, but what if you didn’t need to burn songs to a CD? Behold the iPod. Can’t afford to buy the song? No problem. Listen to this ad and you can listen to it for free.
Convenience is death-by-a-thousand-cuts to third places. Gone are the days of meeting friends at HMV to browse the clearance bin, or pacing the aisles of Rogers Video until you all decide on a movie or game for your Friday night hangout. What shooter pairs best with pizza and Doritos is a serious question for a group of friends, and those are decisions that simply don’t come up very often anymore.
Thanks to ever-increasing bandwidth, streaming has become ubiquitous. Year-over-year, screens get better and cheaper. Streaming and downloading have killed entire segments of the economy and replaced them with products that are better by virtually every metric — except one: human connection. There is nothing in the app store that will replace that experience; which brings us back to the mall.
The third season of Stranger Things kicks off with the Hawkins youth basking in the neon glow of the new Starcourt Mall. The adults might be lamenting the loss of Main Street businesses, but the kids are in their element. The mall provides employment, and therefore new social connections, but it takes a much larger role in the story as a place to gather organically. It’s large, vibrant, and free to enter, so it’s a natural place to go with friends whether they can shop or not. It’s got a variety of food options with communal seating, a movie theatre, and an arcade. More telling though is the effect it has on Eleven, the lab-raised protagonist. Going to Starcourt is a crash course in humanity for Eleven. She observes the shoppers, copies their styles, and mimics their behaviours. In doing so, she experiences true joy, and gains a better sense of herself. In one afternoon, she takes a massive leap towards true self actualization.
Just here for the Wi-Fi — The (increasingly private) public sphere
If you were to step into a London coffeehouse in 1801, you would find yourself in a raucous environment of caffeinated Brits guzzling cheap cups of java and engaged in spirited conversation. They weren’t a uniquely English phenomenon, however. They had been springing up all over Europe, from French Salons and Austrian Kaffeehaus, catering to an expanding middle class who frequented them to discuss their rapidly changing societies — and in many respects — shaping them. These spaces became indispensable to public discourse as low-barrier forums for debate, discussion, and disseminating ideas.
Fast forward to your local Starbucks today and you’ll find something radically different. Where cafés of the past were hubs of serendipitous conversation and social mixing, today it’s for prearranged meetings with a friend or working on that screenplay you’re definitely going to finish this year.
Whether public or private in nature, gathering spaces like coffee houses, parks, or gyms are becoming increasingly individual experiences. The portability of technology and wealth of available content means we can distract ourselves and smother our inner monologues without having to interact with — gag — other people. Prosocial environments that increased connectivity and community in the past are increasingly being populated by individuals who bring their home or work into third places. Slowly, this changes the very culture of these spaces.
We also legislate changes that have creeping effects on organic gatherings in the public sphere. North American cities are designed around cars for residents who want their own slice of aristocratic living: the single-detached house — complete with a front lawn that’s almost entirely decorative and serves almost no practical application — except as a place for your neighbour’s Labrador to relieve himself and to soak up local reservoirs.
Our car-centric society means automotive reliance for many. There is a drought of third places in suburban areas, which means getting to the nearest pub often means commuting in your Hyundai. And you should go for that beer. An Oxford study has shown that “social drinkers have more friends on whom they can depend for emotional and other support, and feel more engaged with, and trusting of, their local community.” Local bars and pubs encourage socially lubricated connection thanks to alcohol’s effect on the endorphin system. The way we zone our neighbourhoods, however, mean that many residents can’t or don’t take advantage of these spaces.
Anti-social networks
The nonfiction book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community* by Robert Putnam is a deep dive into the decline of social communities. Released in the year 2000, Putnam’s title represents his observation that while more Americans were bowling than ever before, fewer were joining bowling leagues. The book explores a gradual diminishing of social capital and civic engagement that he argues is fundamental for a healthy, functional democracy.
Since the book’s release, we have seen the birth of sites like Facebook that have further shifted communities from physical to digital spaces. The result has been an increase in the appearance of community engagement without any of the prosocial benefits. Membership is now a mile wide and an inch deep, because it demands no investment of time or energy. Divorced from true, physical human connection, community members regularly clash in rhetorical combat, and administrators and moderators routinely cull dissenting voices, creating hegemonic monocultures steeped in tribal orthodoxy. We drop the “people” characteristic from “other people” until they simply become an “other.”
The effect on Western democratic societies appears to be a backsliding of civil discourse, cooperation, and compromise. Facebook groups and social media feeds are regularly targeted by international agencies to sow discord — an element of what Russia describes as “Hybrid Warfare.” An official NATO release issued on April 26, 2024 reported that “digital and social media are breeding grounds for disinformation, and Russia brings that into its strategic calculus.” Russia’s cyber meddling in online communities result in real-world upheaval.
In 2017, The Texas Tribune ran the headline, “A Russian Facebook page organized a protest in Texas. A different Russian page launched the counterprotest.” The story reported on Russian manipulation of online communities to foment conflict and create division. During the Cold War, Russia invested significant time and resources into training and developing spies and intelligence networks that were made almost irrelevant with the invention of social media platforms like Facebook. They can now exert far more leverage over many more societies for a fraction of the cost, largely because we don’t really know the members of our communities anymore.
The prevalence and siloing of online communities has led to a far more insular nature of groups that become radicalized by their self-imposed isolation from heterodox thinking. This makes these communities intellectually lazy and prone to poor decisions and ideological overreach. This ultimately fuels backlash from similarly-structured, but oppositional communities in a continual loop of polarized reactivity.
For most of human history, your friends were just the people who lived nearest to you, and most friend groups contained individuals who didn’t gel as readily as others. However, getting along with the one person in the group who irritated you was preferable to being socially ostracized, so you made it work. You found a way to get along. Today, though, childhood friendships are far more cultivated — part of a phenomenon that Haidt describes as “The decline of the play-based childhood,” in which decreased childhood autonomy has led to an atrophying of the prosocial muscles needed for civic engagement in adulthood.
Impulse, agency, and who we choose to be
Last year, in a review for the third season of Ted Lasso, I wrote that the portrayal of a prosocial character like Lasso, utterly devoid of cynicism, “made me hyper-aware of the way I moved through the world, and conscientious of my interaction with colleagues and strangers alike.” The key ingredient for Lasso, and the lesson he instils on-screen and off, is one of agency. We are who we decide to be, and we can choose to make healthier choices all the time — from what we put in our bodies, to where we direct our attention, to how we spend our social capital.
In 2005, the late American novelist David Foster Wallace delivered the now infamous “This is Water” commencement speech to Kenyon College. An invitation to be more aware, thoughtful, and considerate of the world around us — the water we’re all swimming in, but rarely take any notice of — contains a distillation of human impulse at the heart of the erosion of third places:
“Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.” (…)
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. (…)
Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”
We all have grand designs for what we want our life to be, but continue to make choices that run counter to those ends. We elect leaders on platforms of reform, but revolt when we’re asked to sacrifice to achieve our own objectives. We want to fight global warming, but rail against carbon taxes; call to house the homeless, but protest supportive housing in our neighbourhoods; decry globalization, and then order clothes from SHEIN.
We crave human connection, but wear headphones in public — a signal to be left alone. We follow causes that concern us, but donate nothing more than a like or a share. We buy houses with high fences in the suburbs, commute alone, and watch reruns of Friends, envious of the relationships formed through the third place of Central Perk. We take the path of least resistance, absorbed in our thoughts, anxieties, and dreams, only to look up to see we’ve wandered off by ourselves. We’re not Chandler and Monica — we’re the person in the background, alone and unnoticed.
The complete antithesis of this can be found in grueling events like Tough Mudder, in which getting up and over the wall relies on group effort — people to push from below, and haul up from above. Real human effort, cooperation, and grit. A choice to take the hard road, and conceptualize success not through ease and convenience, but by prioritizing the “unity” in community.
I’m no exemplar of how to live a more communal life. I use Amazon Prime, and wear headphones to the gym. I drive to school, and rarely volunteer. But I try to be conscious of the water I’m swimming in, and to not float unconsciously through my days. I try, like Wallace implores, to remind myself that “this is water.”
This is water.
Long ago, when DeLoreans roamed the earth, Brad was born. In accordance with the times, he was raised in the wild every afternoon and weekend until dusk, never becoming so feral that he neglected to rewind his VHS rentals. His historical focus has assured him that civilization peaked with The Simpsons in the mid 90s. When not disappointing his parents, Brad spends his time with his dogs, regretting he didn’t learn typing in high school.