Get Out Now
Zealous supporters of online, home-bound living are missing out on that thing called life.
At the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit, NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway gave this bit of advice to young people:
You should never be home. That's what I tell young people. Home is for seven hours of sleep and that's it. The amount of time you spend at home is inversely correlated to your success — professionally and romantically. You need to be out of the house.
In the Yahoo Finance article where I read Galloway’s advice, author Vishesh Raisinghani relates it to the need to return to offices. Raisinghani then pushes back, essentially saying Galloway overlooks the pandemic and generational shifts from the primacy of in-person to online, device-based communication. An MSN article related to the 58 year old Galloway’s advice compiles online rebuttals, presumably made by millennials and Gen Z’s. Their arguments range from statements like, “I’m paying $2,100 [for rent]. I should never not be home” to “this is a completely outdated mindset” to “Remote worker here who makes $300,000 and married with a baby. Haven’t been outside in a week.” If these rebuttals are reflective of the millennial and Gen Z zeitgeist, then the future of interpersonal relationships is in grave danger.
First off, I loathe offices. Spending an hour or two a day commuting to a place where you spend another eight to ten hours sitting and performing administrative and information work that could be done from home —well, it’s unnatural, inefficient, and hopefully on the brink of extinction. Fuck offices. But offices aren’t the only reason to leave the house. Humans are social animals. We are evolutionarily designed to live and thrive in communities. Meeting friends, romantic partners, eating, drinking, exercising, spiritual congress —these are all awesome, non-office-related reasons to leave the house. Unfortunately, millennials and Gen Z’s have serious handicaps preventing them from doing these things.
In the U.S. particularly, housing is both expensive and considered sacrosanct, so people are prone to spend too much on housing, particularly millenials who spend more on housing than Gen X and Boomers. Further, around 50 percent of young people (18-29) are living with their parents. I can imagine being rent burdened or living in the relative comfort of a parent’s home would inhibit young folks to go out in the world and make professional, social, and romantic moves.
Millennials and Gen Z’s have grown up with mobile tech and social media and know nothing different. According to a McKinsey report about Gen Z, tech, and mental health, “Over one-third of Gen Z respondents say they spend more than two hours each day on social media sites; however, millennials are the most active social media users, with 32 percent stating they post either daily or multiple times a day.” Other sources report average social media use for young people exceeding four hours a day. Whether it’s 2, 4, or 8 hours a day, it seems obvious that the online, virtual world is as, or more real, for young people as the physical world. In many ways, they don’t know what it’s like to have in-person, spontaneous, and unmediated conversations, flirtations, and other social interactions.
Unlike Galloway’s New York City home, in most of the U.S., it is difficult to leave one’s house. Due to restrictive, single-use zoning, most American towns don’t have cafes, bars, parks, etc. near housing, requiring a car and a drive to “be out of the house.” This systemic inconvenience for getting out might make it easier for young folks (and old ones) to justify staying at home, online.
As a young Gen X’er and someone who lived in NYC for nearly two decades (time spent mostly out of my apartments), I wholeheartedly agree with Galloway’s contention. I lament the defense of glued-to-a-device living. My preference for physical reality is not saccharine nostalgia, but a conclusion derived from ample time spent online and IRL. I’ve tried both and have concluded that most, if not all, of my life’s most important events and relationships were out in the world and not at home through a device.
Perusing the 5,200 comments on the Yahoo post, one stood out that stated, “I guess the real question is whether or not digital networking with others is as effective as in-person. Being more comfortable with one approach doesn't mean it's better.” When growth, not comfort, is your life’s endgame, the physical and social isolation of at-home, digital living is a sorry replacement for the uncomfortable immediacy of being out in the world.
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