People are lonely. Is it because we are addicted to our phones, or is that a symptom of larger design choices we made when building our places? We cover some of the general concepts related to social infrastructure an try to evaluate what to do next.
Interviews:
@studio.leonardo
@TypeAshton
@flurfdesign
@amandamaryanna
Video Filmed, Edited and Directed by Mike Pasternock
Story Producer/Researcher: Seairra Jones
Books Referenced:
-Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2020.
-Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. Berkshire Publishing Group LLC, 2023.
-Klinenberg, Eric. Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. Broadway Books, 2019.
-Boyd, Danah. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. Yale University Press, 2015.
00:00 Intro
01:30 The Social Erosion Begins
03:33 Chance Encounters in Third Places
06:15 Zillennial or Boomer?
08:00 A Lack of Autonomy
10:27 Rachel Returns with Footage
12:25 Germany and Universal Design
14:23 Good and Bad Responses
15:29 Well-Meaning, Overbearing
17:25 What Do We Do?
[Music] humans are wired for social connection it’s key to our survival you look lonely you and I are in the loneliest generation this week I discovered a terrible Earth disease called loneliness Americans are lonelier than ever but I’m I’m so lonely and they can’t get any lonelier than this no one prepares you for the loneliness that you feel in your 20s it’s like you feel like nobody has you to feel lonely loneliness loneliness lonely talking about loneliness people are talking a lot about our loneliness epidemic and all the stats studies about how this affects our health or troubling but hear me out I don’t think we’re talking enough about isolation I’m not referring to Hermits hamori or mental health struggles but unwilling isolation the physical separation of humans from each other it’s easy to blame technology or culture or kids these days but I think it goes deeper than that so I wanted to figure this out and like you I began on YouTube all right so a few things have become pretty clear sociologists and psychologists widely agree that humans are social creatures or at the very least we naturally form tribes and it seems like the common diagnosis nowadays for loneliness as it relates to young people is that we are addicted to our phones kids don’t go outside these days our dopamine receptors are whack we get it but what if it’s not just our social media addictions that are making us lonely what if this trend of staying inside on our phones and online is the result of a larger more pervasive and sneaky separation of humans from from our communities I had to get offline for a bit so I picked up some books suggested by friends and co-workers and Sierra started some research on her own as well full transparency ouro at strong towns is placemaking and design patterns so my focus here is definitely influenced by this in his book bowling alone Robert putam points to the modern erosion of one of our most important social metrics Social Capital this is essentially all the networks that make collaboration among individuals more effective putam suggests that this decline beginning after its peak in the 1950s might be due to these reasons demographic changes work and economic pressures technology and media generational change and suburbanization we don’t have much to say about the first four of these but we can speak on the last one putam suggests that the move to Suburban areas often isolates individuals and makes Community engagement more challenging with an ever increasing handbook full of laws that restrict how we build our city we stop working together to create our places our eroding trust in each other led us to prioritize private and family life over the village and we designed subdivisions that physically bar ourselves off from each other so why did we do this and what do we do about it we need to start with some context things weren’t always this way putam refers to Alexis seville’s observations when describing the early United States Social Foundation he says that it was the Americans propensity for civic association that most impressed toille as the key to their unprecedented ability to make democracy work our ability to create associations with each other wasn’t dependent on using meetup.com our cities used to have amenities interconnected throughout them so that instead of having to drive to Walmart people were able to walk to a corner store in their neighborhood many could easily stroll downtown or to public hangout spots where they’d have chance encounters there were places that kids just knew they could walk to like Parks ice cream shops or even just meeting up in the street to play games in his 1999 book The Great good place Ray oldenberg suggests that these chance encounters where we could build social capital often happen in what he calls third places these are places Beyond home work and school where you can spend time relaxing connecting and feeling a sense of belonging they have a low bar to entry to get into in other words it’s a free or lowcost place nothing more expensive than getting a coffee these aren’t a new phenomenon they can be found in the Greek Agora the Roman bath house the Chinese tea house or the French salon I know in Chicago a good example of this would be the lakefront where at any point on a nice late spring and summer day I can find tons of people hanging out playing spike ball having picnics tanning and just enjoying each other’s company and I often run into friends from high school or from college who ended up Landing in Chicago this is my favorite Chicago amenity it belongs to everyone and we pride ourselves in that in other places I’ve lived and for most new developments in the United States parks are oriented around children and dogs and I have neither so it’s kind of weird for me to hang out in those places while coffee shops and bars exist sometimes I don’t want to spend money to exist comfortably with other people I came across this video called why our third places are Vanishing by Rachel Leonardo her channel is criminally underrated you should check it out we’ve worked together before and I knew that she was a person who I could talk to about good social infrastructure and what it actually looks like so we took Ray oldenberg eight categories of what makes a good third place and boiled them down to three simpler ones I’ll skip to our recap one it’s a community living room two it’s accessible and inclusive and three it’s like a a place to play and and chat do you feel like where you’re at in Pamplona that is a thing that exists 100% there’s like no doubt in my mind that I think that we could find a couple places that best represent that idea this video by Flur design called why kids don’t go outside anymore was really eye openening he does a great job of putting words to the problem and he had me thinking about my own childhood as a kid growing up in what we would call like a a pre-World War II street car suburb I couldn’t relate I had plenty of third places including a plethora of parks after Middle School hordes of us would hang out play sports socialize climb trees and just be kids if friends were hanging out on a summer day with no plans we would often just ride our bikes to downtown Elmhurst where we’d surely run into friends and acquaintances without fear of being kicked out for loitering in this way I sometimes find myself relating to older Generations describing their childhood more than younger ones who grew up in modern what we call Suburban experiment suburbs take this from Tom a strong Town’s member who wrote a story for us about his hometown of Erie Pennsylvania it was the height of the baby boom you couldn’t turn around without bumping into a kid your age though so it was a lot of very free floating Society of kids I mean I remember one summer when we just played baseball in this one backyard every day it was like having a job and actually I’m thinking you were you were talking about third places or like places that were kind of Hangouts and I immediately thought of Buddy Russell’s buddy Russell was an old retired Chaz musician who had like a snack bar Corner Store kind of place the free range aspect of my life continued in high school I mean I had a bus pass and I took a city bus home the similarities between Tom’s and my childhood remind me that it’s not just about having a third place to go to it’s about the ability for anyone to get there and belong there nowadays instead of kids going outside on their own to explore and have fun we have kids stuck waiting for their parents to drive them to Target so they can be monitored as they get Starbucks and walk around this is like Whiplash from the latch key generation but I know I’m sounding a little bit like a Krogan so let’s talk to someone who’s actually part of gen Z and grew up in the environment that I’m talking about I saw this video called why you need a third place by Amanda from the channel Amanda Marana and I knew that she would have a great perspective so I think it was just like my childhood was very uh marked by a lack of autonomy which I don’t know if I always necessarily felt that in the moment I it was frustrating at times though because I also grew up in a household where only my mom drove my dad doesn’t drive cuz he has like a visual impairment it was just like more of a a struggle to like get around even like getting someone to like bring me to practice or like pick me up from things and stuff it was just like hard because my mom couldn’t always do it so there was a lot of I honestly had a lot of anxiety of being like oh jeez how am I going to get here I have to ask someone for a ride and I didn’t want to like you know feel like a burden to people this sucks and this is one of the unintended consequences of us adopting car Centric infrastructure or places that are designed with using the car as the primary means of getting places when a car equals autonomy not having one means being a burden and while Amanda has s moved move to a place where it’s easy to get around without a car and she loves the new social sphere she’s in I’m sure that plenty of you watching this may be thinking well I have a car and I have a social life so what’s the deal we aren’t talking about car ownership I own a car cars don’t make us lonely needing one to have a social life is a real problem Amanda also touched on how Starbucks a brand that’s built its reputation around being a third place has moved away from the Cozy and comfortable hangout into a sterile and efficient model they put out a memo in 2022 where they claim that third places include cars and phones there’s no guarantee that your favorite third place chain will still be an option for you even if you can drive to it car Centric infrastructure allows for corporations with more efficient Supply chains to beat local coffee shops and Corner Bakeries that used to be in every neighborhood sometimes I do feel like my childhood and coming of age like sometimes I’m like oh I feel like it’s missing a certain texture to it because many things were I just was on my phone and that’s I mean that’s why honestly I became a YouTuber so I really can’t say I like regret you know any of it because I was just like always so online I I’ve had my YouTube channel since like 2012 but I I don’t know I think my life would have like a really different texture in a time where that didn’t exist I really like the phrasing there what does that texture look and feel like well luckily Rachel got back to me with some footage so let’s check check it out hey Mike I’m on my way to the takona right now which is one of the two spaces that I wanted to Define as a good third place here in Pomona I think this place has a does a really good job of being a community living room like you had mentioned there is a space for everybody to be at whether you’re just coming to try and sit on a bench or over here I think this is what really makes it a third place is offering structures that can provide food and different atmosph spere from just the natural aspect I also think it’s quite accessible I don’t know if you can see behind me here but there’s a bus stop where four different lines come through and we’re literally feet away from accessing this park and also other aspects of the city for people to enjoy here in Spain the Terrace life is really big where people will come and they’ll drink a beer and they’ll sit on the Terrace for for hours just to speak with one another it’s a really really nice way of life and I think this is a more man-made example of those three characteristics that you defined what I think is really exciting about this is not all of them have to be the same we can take these Frameworks and apply them in different ways and with different strategies to create spaces that best reflect what the people in those towns and cities need they don’t have to look like bablon de Castillo with bars around the perimeter all over the place but they can have an American touch that makes it feel like like people are proud to be in those spaces as well Rachel brings up a really good point and that’s that our third places should reflect the places they exist within and this got me thinking I know someone who’s an expert in human geography and architecture and she also happens to be a mom who grew up in the United States and is now raising her kids in Germany I talked to Ashton shler of the channel type Ashton to understand some of the cultural differences she noticed reflected in German places versus American places in Europe but in specifically German cuz that’s where I live um I tend to see a lot fewer kids only spaces or adult only spaces so for example in the United States you’ll have playgrounds which are very much kidon spaces and then on the other end of the spectrum you’ll see things like a beer garden which is very much an adult only space but in Germany you’ll often find those two things right next to each other there’s this real intention in German to build spaces that everyone can enjoy whether that’s the spectrum of age or the spectrum of ability and one of the things that I love advocating for as part of Universal Design is that we don’t just simply think about the life cycle of a building in terms of its physical sense right like how long will this building be useful but rather how can a building adapt as people age and I think that’s something that was really missed by a lot of the car Centric designs that we’ve put in place if you are an adult and able-bodied person with a car United States can be a really great place to be but if you don’t have that access anymore it can be quite limiting and a consequence of that design is now we’ve also lost a lot of the social infrastructure for a community to really be there to check up on one another when Amanda mentioned that missing texture of her childhood it reminded me that we can’t just plop a generic third place in a town and expect it to function in the same way that a co-created Public Square can many videos and articles concerning third places focus on why we need them and how you can get one or build one rather than making incremental adjustments to accommodate spaces people desire to use already I’ll give you two examples of this there’s an area along the lakefront that become an unofficial dog partk the city saw that there was demand for this after a petition was sent and the lake view dog park referendum ended up passing with 80% support on the ballot I’m not sure what’s taking so long though an example of this that’s kind of a bummer is the shutdown of Friday morning swim club this began as people hopping into the lake at montro Harbor and turned into a massive event with thousands of people socializing grabbing coffee and jumping into the lake before work Chicago doesn’t officially permit swimming in the lake before 11:00 a.m. and montress harbor isn’t technically a designated swim area but instead instead of finding ways to accommodate this clear demand which was made clear by Chicago’s official tourism arm the city brought out police and intimidated people Gathering while there are different opinions on the legality and safety of organizing an event like this the park district chose to demand that the organizers pay hundreds of thousands in permits and requirements or shut down instead of finding ways to make it work for everyone the city’s reasoning valid or not reveals a backwards mindset about how cities interact with their citizens this desire for control and planning is eerily similar to that of a well-meaning but overbearing parent in her book it’s complicated the social lives of network teens Dana Boyd observed that teenagers would much rather get together in person with friends while parents were under the impression that the classroom after school activities and pre-arranged playdates were how teens wanted to socialize teens were more interested in informal Gatherings with broader groups of peers free from adult surveillance we’ve in a lot of ways taken away the autonomy for them to be able to go into these social places alone and visit with their friends and chat again without being chaperoned so instead they’ve built these communities online to be able to fulfill this Primal need I think they have to be these social creatures to have this human interaction this isn’t just about kids though while their plight is important we should see that they for wor social migration online is a warning to everyone in his book palaces for the people Eric kleinenberg writes if we fail to build physical places where people can enjoy each other’s company regardless of age class race or ethnicity we will all be similarly confined good social infrastructure isn’t exclusive to Germany or Spain and it doesn’t have to take the form of a large corporate monstrosity like kazania either I think of a place in Milwaukee called Southshore Terrace kitchen and beer garden which is located within Southshore Park you have a beach you have Lake Michigan you have the German American heritage of Milwaukee reflected in the fact that it’s a beer garden you have a playground and it’s accessible to the neighborhood that it’s surrounded by it also doesn’t cost a family of4 $100 to visit this is awesome and we need more of it no we should not copy and paste it but we should allow places like this to develop everywhere when people want their neighborhoods to improve or they want amenities like I mentioned it’s such a lazy and tired response to tell people to just move I’m sure people who are cool with leaving friends family and jobs would love to but even so the street car suburbs and neighborhoods have already been discovered and there aren’t enough of them to go around our desire to control neighborhoods is what got us here in the first place the demand for traditionally developed suburbs that Foster community and allow people to be less car dependent like Somerville Massachusetts Media Pennsylvania and elhurst Illinois is in insane if you can’t afford to move or you’re locked into a really great interest rate it’s on you to advocate for your town to get back to better development patterns this sounds really easy in theory to support but are you open to loosening up zoning laws to allow for more diverse infill development in your neighborhoods what about introducing a new pilot project that would allow for backyard Cottages allowing for more people to live in and contribute to your neighborhood and more kids playing in the park and if you’re afraid of an outside developer taking advantage of your precious town then are you going to do it yourself are you going to support the local developer who has a stake in your town or the local small business who doesn’t want to and can’t afford to demolish a storefront downtown because of parking minimums because if not you shouldn’t be surprised when a beloved local cafe is replaced by a Subway or your library is defunded or you don’t see your kids anymore or your assisted living facility is so far from grandkids that you’re stuck watching office reruns on your meta Quest 8 because you can’t afford to downsize nearby and if you’re nodding along to this angry at someone else for not letting you have the life you want you don’t get a pass either have you joined a casual running club or kickball league in your town have you started a meetup group based on your Niche interests have you showed up to your local coffee shop enough to be recognized by the Barista or made an effort to learn the name of the front desk guy at your gym have you joined a local conversation or advocacy group and spoken to your city council person strong towns don’t happen overnight we are all co-creators in the places we live and our actions matter as much as I may be a regular on some of your YouTube feeds I also know that I’ve been dragging my own feet when it comes to becoming a regular in my strong Town’s local conversations so I’m going to go ahead and get to our happy hour but I’ll catch you next time peace [Music]
45 Comments
It’s easy to feel alone when the obstacles you face are so huge, but you’re not. The Strong Towns movement is made of thousands of people across North America, and they’re all working toward the same goal: safer, stronger, happier cities. Join the movement and gain the tools you need to turn your isolating town into a vibrant community! Become a member today: https://www.strongtowns.org/membership
Your parents sold you out, teachers and schools sold you out, the press sold you out
And yet, transit ridership is struggling to match prepandemic levels as people decided city living is inferior to their suburban or even rural living. Hollowed city cores have become normal and suburbs and new rural remote work villas are normalized. Best of all, remote work is the most climate friendly change humanity figured out. It is naturally zero emissions and it only costs fiber optic cable instead of disruptive and displacing transit projects. We should celebrate and further embrace the change away from cities as a place we needed to go each day. And with advances like Ai and virtual reality, the future of work is not to be on a train or a bus to get to a building so you can work. I don't see why any town needs higher density when there is so much land we can develop. The problem was commuting from there to the city. But that is now dead so as long as you can get fiber, power and water, you can live and work happily. Not in a backyard. Not in somebody's side unit. Your. Own. Home. 🎉
Projection. We built some isolating places, and they're good for people who prefer that. We also built the exact opposite, and those places are good for people who prefer that. No one solution will fit all preferences. Celebrate diversity.
4:37 dog parks are ruining America
One other recommendation I would add is to acknowledge the presence of your neighbors. Make eye contact and nod or say hello. It does more than you think, it could brighten up someone's day. It also helps you be aware of your surroundings.
Another challenge is that cities don't make places you can sit down in public anymore, because they will attract all the homeless people. And making houses for homeless is clearly forbidden by the laws of physics, so we can't have working park benches. Those are the rules.
Social isolation drives a lot of the anger in this country, further making it hard to relate to other people. Its a downward spiral we need to fix fast. Great video!
The coolest thing happened Haut 2 weeks ago. I was walking my baby in the stroller and a woman came up to me, asking about his name and so on. She told me about her kids (she was roughly 10-20 years older). We just walked for 15 minutes and talked about nature and the town. Never met her before I
I'm so glad I live in Germany. I never really thought about the freedom I had as a kid. We had so many forests, a lake, playgrounds and soccer fields. I lived on one end of the town. Meeting up with friends I called up everyone or I just walked to places I knew friends would be at.
Even if my friend who lived at the other side of the town had time, I got on my bike and drove there. Through traffic. Or I walked there for roughly 20 minutes. I liked the walks. Meeting people like the local baker or the really small trading cards & miniature shop owner. One would meet people doing gardening or shoveling snow.
My parents trusted me. I always left a note where am at and when I would be home (if it was prior to the 6pm deadline).
Nowadays it's even better. On one side of the lake they've built a huge playground next to an area with big outdoor tables and seats. You can get a coffee if you want or go to the other side of the lake and just sit down on the grass and eat your bring your own food. Read books, drive bikes, invite friends.
It's crazy how awesome that is. And it's only one part of the town. There is the local market which has a pharmacy and doctor nearby. You always meet old friends after work. On the other hand I can simply walk 200m and I'm out on the fields. Many ways that spread to forests the lake and nearby towns. You always meet people.
Kids do ring our doorbell and tell us if our cat has a tick. It's a rather mundane information but we are always happy they look out for the cat.
Elmhurst is 100% THE best place I’ve ever lived. I was able to live not too far from the train station and the library, cafe, restaurant, bar, other cafe, other restaurant, grocery store, ice cream shop, quaint boutiques, bike trails…. I miss it
Delightful to see an Amandamaryanna/Strong Towns collab!
Incredible and important video!! Great production adn writing too. I prefered the old 50s style thumbnail to the clean one you all changed it to tho…
Who doesn't make an effort to learn their service worker's name? Thought provoking video all round, tho!
capitalism make us lonelier than needed
What is weird for me as a 'socialist' European, is that the market clearly states that there is a demand for walkable mixed use neighbourhoods, but that it's illegal in the US to build these neighbourhoods because of zoning laws.
Despite the overwhelming data that violent crime has gone down since the mid 20th century, our fear-mongering culture decided that all adults were possible murderers, kidnappers, and rapists and hence we should totally separate child-oriented spaces from adult-oriented ones. This fear of a non-existent boogeyman also created a social environment where it became considered shamefully neglectful to allow children any physical independence. This spread out and car-centric infrastructure robs many young adults of their own third spaces, while creating a stressful chaffeur lifestyle for parents, and a dangerous unwalkable environment that is ironically more damaging to children's safety than "crime" ever was. Also, as mentioned, it creates unwelcoming spaces, where I know I as a 40-something dog-less and child-less man I feel like if I loitered around a public park, someone would call the cops on me.
I LIVE ALONE IN A COMMI BLOCK IN BULGARIA I could never go back to the UK as I would be SO LONELY…!!!
Im part of a community here, I know every one of my neighbours, I play with the kids – cos thats a NORMAL thing adults do the west has made weird – I know every shop keeper cos we have busy high streets full of shops, the teenagers are part of society not stuck in their bedrooms getting anxious.
ITS NOT TECHNOLOGY its the built environment, culture and wealth inequality…!!!
Here in Bulgaria we DONT ahve a loneliness epidemic and we have the SAME technology as the west – but we have 15 minute walkable cities, busy high streets, a very flat society for wealth and a great regard for society and especially children – Im British and the effort Bulgarians put into children as a society is ASTONISHING.
Identify problem, Introduce solution, reassure hope… what a great video.
I’m away from my home on an extended trip but once I get back, time to roll up my sleeves and get to work. We currently have a big crossroads cutting my town in fourths, and one of those arms separates the primary school from the main park of the town, and the main crossroad (which includes a four lane highway that they plan on adding another lane to!) cuts off the middle and high school from the rest of the town. Because I live in a tiny town of 5,000 I think it’s entirely possible to have a good community conversation and coming together to build a better place together. And it’ll take some one like me to make the first step towards making that happen!
AS A BRIT LIVING IN BULGARIA I can't believe how infantilised kids in the UK and the U5A are compared with here.
Just last night, when I was taking my dog to the toilet before bed, two of the girls in the apartment block were off out clubbing – they are 17. They are ADULTS here.
7 year olds walk their 4 year old siblings to school on a morning. Stuff kids are expected to de here as part of learning responsibility would be parental neglect in the UK
I live in a walkable city in Europe but recently my favorite cafe which was a 10 minute walk away got replaced by yet another in some very mid restaurant chain of which there are like 3 in the city and I am mad
Social scientist here! You all did a great job of explaining the phenomenon. My field often ignores the structural/built environment, which is frustrating. Allow me to add a bit to the video's content. The correlations between social isolation and early death, health problems, and other phenomena are mediated mainly by how individuals behave due to loneliness.
The most common loneliness responses are alcoholism and poly-drug abuse, reductions in personal hygiene and exercise, etc. The reaction from my field is often to encourage INDIVIDUALS to "be more social," "go outside and get some exercise," or "join a club." Easy for us to say.
Without support/encouragement from the built environment, walkable neighborhoods, and access to appealing public places outside the home, these suggestions will almost always be ignored. Public planning is a public health issue and should always be factored into our research and clinical work as social scientists. I look forward to the day when research in social psychology, for example, controls not only for factors like race or gender, but zoning style too.
Whoops, sorry. Kept seeing the first thumbnail and thought this was a repeat of an old video.
People are lonely because they want to be around people. We need constant mental stimulation, and people provide that more easily than our interest in a hobby. We moved toward privacy because we actually don't like interacting with a vast majority of people. Crime and disgust moved us toward privacy. Lack of trust moved us toward protectiveness. Where people stay indoors, crime goes down.
In the US poorer kids, often poor Black kids have more autonomy. I spoke to one child riding his bike home here in El Cerrito, CA who complained that he can't hang out with his friends because their parents won't let them ride around town. This too was the case in my childhood – Living in Muncie, IN, I rode everywhere and many of my cohort would not be allowed to do what I was allowed (thank God) to do.
MKE represent!
1:30 honestly I think the social media addiction is more a symptom of our isolating society than a cause. It's the most convenient and often times only means of having some form of connection with other people, even if it shallow and distant and dysfunctional.
Real
You do a big disservice by dismissing the other elements of Bowling Alone, particularly because your fanbase's personal/political views are almost certainly out of line with what he found: that diversity is actually one of the most corrosive things to social capital.
One reason I always struggle to take urbanism seriously is the movement's ostrich-mentality on the fact that being around people who are different than you make people feel isolated, and they then carry that isolation-mentality into other aspects of life. The suburbs only exist because of this basic reality of human nature. You can dislike it all you want, but it's core to who we are. It'd be like a nudist advocating for nudism across society while completely ignoring the problem of the human s*x drive messing up their clothes-free utopia. Diversity is a fundamental problem with urbanism.
You can either have a tight-knit cohesive community, or you can have diversity. You can't have both. Until urbanists address this, you're all just living out a fantasy.
From ages 8 to 16, I lived in a rural setting, a 20 minute drive from town. The Internet became my social refuge because it was essentially impossible for me to see peers at any times that wouldn't work for my parents. Though of course I went to school and a bunch of sports, clubs, and summer camps, there was no spontaneity to it, and I couldn't see people on a whim on my own terms, so the computer filled those gaps for me. By the time I was in 8th grade, even the Internet wasn't socially satisfying anymore, and there were nights that I would beg my parents, actually legitimately crying, to take us into town for dinner, just so I could BE AROUND PEOPLE when I wanted to, even if I wasn't actually socializing with them. We moved out of that place on my 16th birthday and it's still the best birthday gift I've ever had.
we're only addicted to our phones because we have to be. without them, we teens would almost never talk to each other outside of school, and in school we do, ya know, schoolwork. we use our phones so much because we wanna be out and meeting each other (and new people) randomly, talking to them, etc, but we can't so we made that space our of pixels on a screen. but pixels on a screen don't quite do the job. i wanna just pull up to my friend's houses at random, or maybe we'll spend some time walking to a spot for ice cream before going home from school. but everything is so far apart that it's impossible
Social media, phones and dating apps. People nonstop comparing themselves and looking for easy validation. I live in a walkable city in the Netherlands and can assure you urbanism is not the answer. It is designed by algorithm not infrastructure. Miserable and lonely people spend more money and are better consumers. None of this is accidental. When one feels isolated and alone in the world you wont challenge the status quo in a meaningful way either. A gilded cage and a prison of the mind.
As a Gen X elder, having grown up almost feral in the east bay, I am continually astonished and appalled at how so many of my generation have raised their children via helicopter. So many of Gen Z has no ability to explore unguided or negotiate minor conflict without calling on authority. Do you remember nothing of your own childhood?
I love Chicago!! I am glad I’m back after living in Germany for 7 months. (Please avoid East Germany as much as possible including Leipzig.) Chicago is a shining beacon in the Midwest. It’s “affordable” compared to some of the other big cities in the USA that has beautiful architecture and is walkable with public transportation. I don’t know much about Elmhurst, Illi-Noise, so I’m going to have to check it out. Also, Not Just Bikes channel has this same topic about third places.
This is what happens when you build places like the horr'ible designed suburban areas in America as an american gen z i hate living in one of these makes me feel lonely but we need to start building places with mix zoning and mix urban use with great public transit of infrastructure like the Netherlands or denmark are great examples as a gen z American im glad this vid doesnt blame only on st'upid cheap causes like social media etc that arent the main cause which is a relief thank u so much because i always thought it wasnt the main reason and cause was stuff like social media but Im glad its not now i can sha're thi's with people
Excellent video
The great news is stuff like this is highly demanded in america now and their more plans for infrastructure like this and that gets me excited to solve of what is the main cause of loneliness
any park that isn't full of dog excrement now? third places for non dog people might be nice
13:00 I wish! My city is a boring dystopia with no places to be. They put up these annoying devices that emit high pitched noise to drive teenagers away, who have literally no place in this city. Every. Square. Metre. is dedicated to the car or shaped around the car. The city smells of exhaust and I am woken up at night by honking and noisy engines. Germans WORTHIP the car. They love it more than anything else and they get very angry if they feel someone disrepects their car. German cityspaces built after 1933 are nightmarish hate letters to humanity.
Great video! And thanks for listing the books you referenced.
Great video. But I think this is an American (or North American) problem. I grew up in a Chicago suburb before smartphones and there was plenty of social interaction as there were fewer other options. I’ve lived overseas since then, in places too poor for widespread smartphone usage. Loneliness seems far less prevalent. I think mostly it’s the phones!
I think with the corporatism of the news as well as the desire for money has spiraled out of control. People now get annoyed at the sight of children and won't allow them in their spaces with the idea of them being a nuisance. Also being separated from social circles also furthers the distance between people.
For an introvert foreigner, USA is a nightmare. @19:08 – @19:28 onwards makes it clear how inhospitable, even hostile, your country is to people who are not extroverts, who don't thrive on group culture, who are not constantly vocal and loud. Imagine how lonely such an immigrant would be in your country.
Gated communities is still a concept that is just baffling to me.
And "loitering", what the fuck is loitering, and why is it not allowed?!