If getting out of the house feels like too much trouble these days, you’re not alone. In a 2022 Pew survey, 35% of respondents said that going out and socializing had become less important to them since the pandemic began.
But Kathy Giuffre, an author and sociology professor at Colorado College who focuses on the impact of social interactions on individuals and communities, has a simple message: Going to places where you run into people, “whether it’s someone you’ve met before or someone that you haven’t [is] incredibly important” for your mental health.
As part of our “Getting Out” series — interviews with experts about the importance of in-person interactions — Rev recently spoke to Giuffre and found out why something as simple as a trip to the neighborhood coffee shop can matter so much.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Rev: How did the pandemic change our relationships?
Giuffre: In the pandemic, we all learned very quickly how to use all the different types of communication. You and I are on the opposite side of the planet from each other, but we’re chatting right now.
On the one hand, this is great. On the other hand, it’s not informal. It’s a formal meeting, and it’s a formal meeting where we already have some sort of way of being in touch with each other beforehand — you had to find my email address. It’s impossible for me to turn and say, “Oh, you know what? My friend Jim, who’s next door, let’s drag him over here because he and I were just talking about this thing and it’s really cool.” That doesn’t exist here.
In the same way, I can get my groceries delivered now, but if I do that, I can’t run into a friend or acquaintance at the grocery store and just chat with them. I never have that conversation when someone’s just dumping groceries on my front porch and driving away.
If you use social media to maintain ties with people who are far away, you know, your college roommates who you would’ve lost touch with, that’s great. If you’re using it as a substitute for getting out in the world, that’s problematic.
At a high level, why do social relationships matter?
Research from pretty much every area of the social sciences and some of the natural sciences has shown that interpersonal relationships between people are really critical. They increase things like longevity and resilience to disease. They improve people’s mental health, economic prospects, creativity, and happiness in their lives.
So having strong social relationships is crucial, but we shouldn’t discount casual acquaintances, because they play an invaluable part of our social lives.
A sociologist named Ray Oldenburg came up with the concept of the “third place.” The first place is the home. The second place is the workplace. A third place is somewhere that has free access — you can go anytime without pre-arrangement and either run into friends or run into people who maybe you didn’t know before.
The place is structured so you may strike up a conversation. Public parks are a great place for this. City streets can be this, too: You’re walking your dog, someone else is walking their dog, and you chat with each other. Maybe it’s not the deepest conversation in the world, but maybe it is because sometimes it’s so much easier to talk to someone who is a relative stranger about deeper issues.
You’ve talked about why third places matter to individuals, but what do they mean on a community level?
One of the things that third places do is they can really bond a community together. They function as information-exchange networks. We tend to think of that in negative ways, like, “Oh, gossip happens there.” But gossip is an exchange of information — and sometimes really important information — so that people know what’s going on in their community.
The other thing that these third places and meeting places do for communities is they build trust. Maybe you’ve had your coffee in your morning coffee place for ten years, and you’ve seen the same person there. You know who they are and that you can trust them and they can trust you.
When something happens in a community that’s problematic, it’s good to have those sorts of trust relationships. And I hate to go here, but I have to go here. When the Nazis emerged in Germany, one of the first things they did was start infiltrating all of the little social clubs, all of those informal places. The places where men met for lunch every day, or the bridge club, or the book club, or the shooting club.
And it’s worth mentioning here that you’ve studied social networks in Weimar Germany, which famously had vibrant social spaces that were relatively free and expressive.
Right, and there was a saying in Germany that if you have three Germans, you have a club. Club life was so important. There were all sorts of clubs: hiking clubs, archery clubs, card-playing clubs.
Basically, what happened was they put one fervent party member in each of these different clubs. It broke down trust because you didn’t feel like you could speak openly, and then there’s no point in going. It turns out people weren’t really that into beer drinking. What they were into was drinking and talking with their friends. And once they felt like they couldn’t really talk, there was no point in going, and then people lost trust.
So I hate to go to the extreme of the example, but that is why breaking down these social groups is so devastating for societies. These gathering spots are the glue that holds society together.
Decisions about the built environment matter too, right? If I want my place to be better for everyone to interact, what should I be looking for, or advocating for, or hoping to see?
What you said is absolutely critical: “For everyone.” What makes a really vibrant third place is that it is inclusive of all types of people.
That means different generations. A 16-year-old can run into someone who is 86 and chat with them in a safe space. There’s people who are not from the same socioeconomic background, people who are not from the same racial or ethnic background, but they feel comfortable here.
Good lighting is important. Good maintenance is important. One thing that is really interesting in the history of these places is accessible bathrooms. When the first department stores appeared in Paris in the 19th century, one of the things that made them a roaring success was they had bathrooms. That meant women could go somewhere and meet other women in a clean, safe, well-lighted environment and not have to rush home to go to the bathroom.
Women flocked to them as a social place. They would say to their friends, “I’ll meet you at the department store,” because there were places to sit and talk. But even today, bathrooms can be really hard to find, and that keeps people from lingering, and the ability to linger is really important.
What are the strong social spaces today? Churches maybe don’t fill that same role, and the pandemic changed so much about so many places. So where are people gathering meaningfully now?
In the United States, we see a huge explosion in book groups, and I think we see a movement toward an authentic type of community gathering there.
We see things like volunteering. I have a friend who has a small organic farm in North Carolina, and she invites people to come and weed her farm on Wednesdays. It’s called Wine + Weeds. She puts out a couple of bottles of wine and people come and weed. They don’t even really drink the wine. What they mostly do is talk, right?
And we can all make coffee in our house, probably, but cafés are still alive, still vibrant, still thriving. It’s interesting because you can see even big chains like Starbucks or McDonald’s becoming big in places that have nothing else. In some small towns, the only place for people to go and get a coffee in the morning might be McDonald’s or Burger King or Dunkin’ Donuts.
Walk into one, and there’s often a group, often elderly people because they’re not at work. They’re sitting in there talking. It’s not so much that it has to be some chic little indie mom-and-pop shop. It can be anything, and people will turn it into this kind of third place because it’s a need people have.
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