Fixing a World of Work We Accidentally Designed to be Lonely
By Sharath C George
Loneliness has become a global epidemic across, with an estimated 33% of adults experiencing loneliness, despite people living closer to each other and being more connected through communication tools.
While this trend is often blamed on social media, it began long before, as people moved into cities. How did this happen?
According to Tracey Crouch, the former UK Minister for Loneliness, we unintentionally designed our cities and housing projects to be lonely. In our rush to build upwards and pack more people into smaller spaces, we sacrificed green lawns and open benches, which used to be organic meeting spots where people connected naturally. Architects, city planners, and engineers got very good at achieving their primary objectives - housing more people, accommodating more office workers, but at the cost of those communal spaces where connections happen: the spaces between the cubicles and the apartments.
We simply carried this trend forward into the digital space, where it became even easier to become hyper-efficient. We took dating and distilled it down to a swipe left or right, without all the awkward moments in between. We distilled friendships and groups down to the basic function of social validation, delivered through likes and hearts. At work, we carefully segmented the blob of things to be done and people working together into its constituent parts: email, office messengers, video conferencing platforms, project management software - each tool brilliant at what it does, but missing out on all the human moments that happened between those neat divisions, and can’t be quantified into metrics.
People have recognised the problem and tried to solve it. There are growing calls to treat social media like junk food or an addictive substance. For work, the prescription is often a forced return to offices. However, that simply changes the venue where disconnection happens, rather than solving it. A study of 1,000 U.S. knowledge workers found that nearly half (47%) of highly lonely employees’ interactions occurred in person, yet they still felt isolated.
If we want to address loneliness, we need to be more intentional in how we design our living and working spaces, and in the activities we encourage there.
Social prescribing, where doctors refer people to group activities rather than relying on medication alone, has already shown success in treating depression and loneliness. Perhaps we need to apply these principles at work too, both for in office and remote workers. This could mean designing tools and features that actively facilitate connections between people beyond just work, organising events, as well as building toolkits and protocols that help people settle into new jobs and the lives that come with them.
Just like companies have onboarding and training programmes to bring new hires up to speed, we need programmes to integrate them into the human web of connections that take time to build.
Imagine if a company could recognise the red flags indicating someone might be lonely - moving to a new city, not having the same first language as others on their team, going through a life event like divorce, bereavement, or even childbirth. If we have standard operating procedures for work, we should have them for helping the people who do that work, too.
A problem of design cannot be solved by neglecting design. We might have designed a lonely world unintentionally, but we can only make it less so with intention.