Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation
Can Out-of-Home Entertainment Venues be Designed to Significantly Reduce Loneliness and Isolation?
The Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation is a REAL problem and it’s affecting people of all ages in the United States and in countries around the world. If you are looking for proof, the Surgeon General released an advisory report in 2023 that raised the alarm about the devastating impact of the epidemic of loneliness and isolation in the United States.
It’s important to note that Out-of-Home Entertainment Venues can be upgraded to better enable our guests to socialize, play, laugh, eat, drink, and most importantly bond with their friends, family, as well as the people who make up the communities they live in.
Unfortunately, out of home entertainment venues can be a part of the problem – especially when they plug their guests back into the out-of-home versions of in-home and mobile entertainment.
Utilizing individual displays and VR headsets is an effective way to block our guest’s ability to have truly human interactions – ones that enable them to more fully socialize and bond with the people they know as well as those who they are meeting for the very first time.
In-home and mobile gaming, social media platforms, and streaming services are accelerating the epidemic of loneliness and isolation. These platforms are NOT designed to bring people together physically or in a way that enables them to have in person face to face conversations while playing, laughing, smiling, eating, drinking, socializing, and simply being with each other.
Humans evolved over tens of thousands of years to create tribes, communities, cities, and even countries. This need to gather together with other humans to sit around the campfire, share stories, contribute, play, meet our significant other, socialize, and bond is what benefits the group as well as the individuals within the group.
Digital gaming, social platforms, and streaming services have one goal and that is to maximize their profit – unfortunately, this goal is in direct conflict with the human need to gather in person, face to face.
Their platforms are designed to lock everyone’s eyeballs onto their digital content for as long as possible every single day. By hijacking everyone’s attention, they are drastically reducing the time people have to gather together to connect and bond.
These anti-social platforms even use fake avatars to connect their users with other users’ avatars. Avatars effectively block the benefits of how humans are designed to connect.
It’s important to point out that these distraction cartels benefit from the epidemic of loneliness and isolation, because the lonelier people feel the more they will use these platforms to distract themselves from thinking about being lonely. Even though these platforms don’t satisfy a person’s need to connect, it’s an easy way for people to forget they are alone. Far too many people accept these fake and simulated connections as good enough, which AGAIN – directly benefits the bottom line of ALL the distraction cartels.
Avatars and even digital replicas of a person’s image are going to become very realistic, but it’s important to point out that they are not actually real. People who use these digital avatars and replicas will be using more and more advanced apps to enhance their looks, modify their voices, as well as alter and/or hide their true expressions, reactions, and even their true identities.
As these digital platforms quickly improve, they are going to Super Size the problems that already exist. Such as, the fake curated lives that people often show on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, etc. These platforms will be able to achieve a more extreme level of fakeness that can’t be distinguished from reality.
The priority for all of these digital platforms is to get everyone addicted to their offerings in order to maximize their profits. They are working relentlessly to lure as many people as possible into their spiderweb of isolation. Once new people log in or sign up, they do whatever it takes to keep them imprisoned/trapped/zombified in their fake digital worlds for as many minutes and hours as possible.
To reiterate, these platforms have NO DESIRE to encourage their users to leave their platforms to gather with their friends, family, coworkers, or the people in their community, because if people did go out to socialize more frequently their revenue will ultimately decline.
These supposedly free platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, and others exist to capture each user’s attention by simply showing them a never ending stream of content with embedded ads that coerce their zombified users to buy x, y, or z, because, if they don’t, they will never be happy!
The subscription services like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney+, and all the others are also competing for our attention – their goal is to keep their subscribers paralyzed by their never ending stream of digital content (i.e. Movies, TV shows, Sports, Documentaries, etc).
The gaming industry has basically the same goals as the free anti-social platforms and the anti-social streaming subscription services, which is to keep their players locked into their gaming experiences for hours and hours every single day.
The gaming industry has both free and subscription services. Think Fortnite for the free version of gaming, where they make their money from selling skins and upgrades. The streaming gaming services use the subscription model to generate their revenue by giving their players 24/7 access to hundreds of games for a low monthly price.
The reality is that NONE of these services want their users to ever feel satisfied or happy with what they already have and they certainly don’t want their users to turn off their digital platforms or mobile devices to go out and build REAL RELATIONSHIPS with their real friends, real family, and the real people who live in their communities.
It’s critical to note that the only real way to build stronger relationships is by physically gathering together face to face with our real human friends, family, coworkers, and the people who make up our communities.
Socializing is NOT easy for many people and that is why out-of-home entertainment operators have to make it as easy as possible for people to connect while they are in our venues.
It’s important to note that these digital companies are tracking everything we do on their platforms. They use what we say, link to, like, love, hate, or watch to identify all the stuff we are most likely to buy, watch, or play next. They also sell our data to other companies so they can use it to convince us to buy more stuff we don’t need.
To make the most money possible, these digital platforms work relentlessly to convince us that we will NEVER have enough and will ALWAYS NEED TO BUY MORE by downloading the newest video game, watching the latest episode, watching a new TV series, purchasing the newest and most amazing anti-aging cream, watching a hundred more cat videos, showing us another reason to be upset about x, y, or z, or that we NEED to buy the best tasting doomsday survival food with an expiration date of March 2079.
The reality is that HUMANS (that would be us) have to allocate more time NOT less to building and maintaining our real relationships as well as expanding our tribe.
Remember that the amount of time these digital distractions suck up is directly squeezing out the opportunities for our guests to have face to face bonding experiences that can strengthen their connections with their friends, family, and the members of their community.
We, as entertainment venue operators must be a part of the solution. To do this, we need to provide our guests with experiences that make it easy for them to gather face to face with people they know as well as making it significantly easier for our guests to meet new people.
The problem is NOT that people have too many friends and family to hangout with – it’s that they have far too few.
Time to LOOK at the Data
“In 1960, single-person households accounted for only 13% of all U.S. households. In 2022, that number more than doubled to 29% of all households”
- U.S. General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community
One of the best ways to bring people together is to play a game – especially one that is designed to be highly social, fun, optimized for casual play, along with the integration of fast casual food and beverage service.
Games optimized for casual play must have a low skill level variance – low skill level variance enables first time players to feel confident that they will be able to play the game. For example, they are able to score points quickly and are able to contribute to their team’s success.
By playing a game that is designed to be highly social, it’s much easier for everyone to engage with each other. They can all talk about the game as well as encourage their friends and family when they take their turn. It’s through playing games that our guests are able to feel more comfortable and a part of the group when socializing.
To maximize the social, we also need to provide comfortable gathering spaces that are integrated with our gaming experiences along with great food and beverage service delivered directly to our guests’ reserved gathering spaces.
“In 2018, only 16% of Americans reported that they felt very attached to their local community”
- US General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community
One of the reasons people are not feeling connected to their community is the drastic decline in traditional community organizations – such as religious organizations, clubs, and other types of groups within the community.
Path to Loneliness and Isolation
In a previous article, I talked about how the United States birth rate is dropping dramatically. In 1960, the birth rate was 3.65. In 2022 it was only 1.2. A birth rate of 1.2 is far below the rate needed to maintain our population.
Based on the current low birth rate, more and more households only have one or two children, which means an increasing number of kids are growing up with no siblings. A child with no siblings comes home from school and they are often Home Alone until mom or dad gets home from work.
Kids learn how to socialize by being around other kids. Unfortunately, the number of opportunities to socialize is declining, which makes it even harder and scarier for kids to learn how to socialize and be a member of a group.
In addition, the number of adults who don’t have any kids is rising. If you add in the fact that approximately 50% of all marriages end in divorce, then we can see why the Crisis of Loneliness and Isolation is going to get significantly worse.
By the way, there’s another significant social roadblock that was caused by the recent Pandemic, which is the dramatic shift to remote work. Several different studies have shown that 30 to 40% of all relationships start at work and one survey showed that up to 40% of all marriages occurred because of a relationship that began at work.
With remote work being a new thing, it’s likely that the number of relationships will continue to decline.
“The rate of loneliness among young adults has increased every year between 1976 and 2019”
- U.S. General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community
What’s THE BIG Opportunity – It’s Helping People To Connect IN THE REAL WORLD!
If we ARE NOT providing our guests with multiple opportunities to facilitate connections at a highly HUMAN level (i.e. fun, casual, highly social, and face to face), then we are enabling the epidemic of loneliness and isolation to not only continue, but to get even worse.
How do we do our part to help solve this crisis?
We must work diligently every day to learn how to create and operate the best human-centered out-of-home entertainment venues. We must provide the best Social Gaming experiences, great fast casual food and beverage service, along with integrated social gathering spaces. All of these must be optimized to facilitate our guests’ ability to more fully enjoy the company of their friends, family, and the people that make up their communities. We must do all of this in a highly humanistic way.
“Trends in Social Networks and Social Participation
Social networks are getting smaller, and levels of social participation are declining distinct from whether individuals report that they are lonely. For example, objective measures of social exposure obtained from 2003-2020 find that social isolation, measured by the average time spent alone, increased from 2003 (285-minutes/day, 142.5-hours/month) to 2019 (309-minutes/day, 154.5-hours/month) and continued to increase in 2020 (333-minutes/day, 166.5-hours/month). This represents an increase of 24 hours per month spent alone.”
- U.S. General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community
What the F&%k!?! On average, human beings in the United States are spending an additional 24 hours per month alone!!! That’s insane! Even if we think it’s going to go back to 2019 numbers, which is unlikely, that’s still an increase of 12 hours per month spent alone!
At the same time, social participation across several types of relationships has steadily declined. For instance, the amount of time respondents engaged with friends socially in-person decreased from 2003 (60-minutes/day, 30-hours/month) to 2020 (20-minutes/day, 10-hours/month). This represents a decrease of 20 hours per month spent engaging with friends. This decline is starkest for young people ages 15 to 24. For this age group, time spent in-person with friends has reduced by nearly 70% over almost two decades, from roughly 150 minutes per day in 2003 to 40 minutes per day in 2020.
- The above data was provided by Kannan V, Veazie P. US trends in social isolation, social engagement, and companionship—nationally and by age, sex, race/ethnicity, family income, and work hours, 2003–2020. SSM – Population Health. 2023;Volume 21.
Double F&%k!! People have decreased the number of hours spent with friends by 20 hours per month!!!
To repeat, the big opportunity is to create dramatically better out-of-home social venues that integrate Social Gaming, Eating & Drinking, along with comfortable gathering spaces. All of these must be designed to maximize human interaction with the ultimate goal of creating multiple opportunities for humans to gather together to bond with their friends, family, and the people who make up their community!!!
This is NOT going to be easy! We are facing a massive enemy designed to distract and addict billions of people. Their goal is to monopolize every person’s free time, which means they want to block everyone from having ANY time to socialize in the REAL WORLD.
Our out-of-home entertainment industry can be a critical part of the solution to the epidemic of loneliness and isolation. BUT, it’s only going to happen if we continuously improve the quality of the social experiences we offer.
Our experiences have to be designed to enable people to truly connect in highly humanistic ways.
Everything we do must be about bringing people together in person and face to face with their friends, family, coworkers, and the people who make up their community – to SEE each other, to COMMUNICATE with each other, to PLAY and LAUGH with each other, to Simply HANGOUT with each other, to EAT & DRINK with each other, and most importantly to BOND with each other.
Below is the link to the full Surgeon General report on the Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation:
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!
Jim Kessler