When Home Gets Too Comfortable

There's a price to privatization.

via Unsplash (public domain)

Derek Thompson's feature piece in last month's Atlantic magazine has got many people buzzing about the surge in societal isolation. There has been an "astounding change" in our habits, with adults spending an additional 99 minutes a day at home in 2022, compared to 2003, and much of that time is spent alone.

One big reason is that modern homes offer many of the conveniences that, previously, we had to go out to find, which would bring us into contact with other people. Thompson writes:

From 1973 to 2023, the size of the average new single-family house increased by 50 percent, and the share of new single-family houses that have air-conditioning doubled, to 98 percent. Streaming services, video-game consoles, and flatscreen TVs make the living room more diverting than any 20th-century theater or arcade.

One home designer says that most new builds are now designed around maximal screen time, with space allotted for flat-screen TVs in every room: "It used to be 'Let's make sure our rooms have great light.' But now, when the question is 'How do we give the most comfort to the most people?,' the answer is to feed their screen addiction." Another designer puts it even more succinctly: "For the most part, apartments are built for Netflix and chill."

I think this is fascinating and true. The more our homes can provide for us, the less we require our community to support those needs. It has become effortless to order in any kind of food, listen to fabulous music or interesting speakers, create an at-home spa, buy fancy coffee makers that produce cafe-worthy cappuccinos, and order interesting products online that, in the past, you would've had to hunt for or stumble across in stores.

Numerous people in my (fairly affluent) rural town have installed hot tubs, saunas, wet bars, backyard pools, and gaming rooms in the basement or garage with ping-pong and pool tables, all in an effort to make their homes even more of an oasis, an escape from the world. At least these are non-screen-based forms of entertainment that could be conducive to socializing, but they still keep people tethered to home.

I've noticed the trend with my own friends at our local CrossFit gym, where it seems the more serious you get, the more likely you are to buy equipment to use at home, which ends up pulling you away from the community because you're busy training at home. I am unconvinced that's a net benefit.

The Price We Pay

I do not have anything against comfortable homes, but the point is, there are tradeoffs that come with "privatizing" too many of the services we used to seek elsewhere. There might be serious long-term repercussions for "our desire to become ensconced in cozier and cozier little bubbles," to quote Substack writer Jim Dalrymple II.

For one, it causes our socializing muscles to atrophy. The less time we spend interacting with others outside the home, the worse we get at it. It's one thing to choose to become more solitary as an adult, but if you have kids, they need exposure to repeated interactions with strangers to develop the confidence to speak for themselves. They need to be taught how to ask for things, order food, make eye contact, and ultimately develop a sense of belonging within a social space.

It also makes us less tolerant. Society can be pictured as a series of rings. The inner ring is where our closest relationships exist, family and best friends, bonded by blood and intimacy. The outer ring is a tribe linked by social affinities and shared interests, e.g., other fans of your favourite sports team. These two rings teach us love and loyalty, respectively.

Then there's the middle ring, comprised of the neighbours and people who live around us, with whom we are familiar but not intimate, also known as the "village." These relationships teach us tolerance and, according to Thompson, are key to social cohesion. "We used to know them well; now we don't."

We become better people when we interact with our neighbours. Says Marc J. Dunkelman, a researcher at Brown University, who came up with the three-ring model:

It is politically moderating to meet thoughtful people in the real world who disagree with you. An important implication of the death of the middle ring is that if you have no appreciation for why the other side has their narrative, you'll want your own side to fight them without compromise.

The more time we spend inside our comfortable houses, the more we fear the outside world. We perceive it as being scarier than it is, as we consume fearmongering news stories via our phones and TVs. And then parents, in particular, become less inclined to send their kids out to play or even walk to school, because everything out there feels like a looming threat. The kids end up indoors, bored, on screens, because there's not much else to do.

The fact is, there's never been a safer time to be a kid in the world than right now. Nonprofit Let Grow reports that the murder rate today is half what it was in the '90s; and that "if, for some reason you WANTED your child to get kidnapped by a stranger, you would need to keep them outside, unattended, for 750,000 years for that crime to be statistically likely to happen."

Adding Friction

Thompson, in an interview, said that he'd like us to start viewing in-person socializing as somewhat equivalent to exercising and eating vegetables, something we know we need to do for health reasons, that may not be our first choice of activity but that we tackle with discipline. Getting out of our houses and seeing other people, even just casually and in passing, is so good for us as humans, and almost always leaves us feeling happier, that we should be strict about incorporating it into our lives regularly. (Supercharged socializing is even better!)

That is partly why I avoid ordering clothes online, because I want a reason to go into a store, interact with salespeople, and support a local business owner. It's why, despite loving good coffee, I've never bought a fancy coffee maker because I want a reason to visit cafés when I crave an occasional great latte. It's why I have a gym membership, so I can see people in real life, instead of taking advantage of my husband's setup in the garage. It's why I don't order groceries online or have food delivered.

I know it's good for me, with my work-from-home, computer-based job, to have reasons to get out in the world. This isn't about making my home less comfortable, but rather, adding small elements of friction that will end up amplifying my overall experience of life.

But more than that, I do think we have an obligation to exist in the world, because we are part of it. If we withdraw and remain in seclusion, we are abdicating a certain amount of responsibility to participate in it and help make it a better place. To have community, we must be community.

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