Renowned trust expert Rachel Botsman examines how technology has made life more homebound, replacing social interactions with ‘frictionless convenience’. Streaming, dating apps and remote work have reduced in-person connection, weakening trust and deepening isolation – with financial pressures and pandemic habits accelerating this shift. Botsman urges us to embrace real-world connection and resist the comfort of solitude in favour of the richness of human relationships.
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Technology has enabled our retreat into increasingly homebound lives of frictionless convenience – but at what cost? Trust expert Rachel Botsman says it’s time to get up and get out
A young man sits on his sofa, glances at his phone, and smiles. Celine Dion’s A New Day Has Come starts playing. He wraps a grey fluffy blanket around himself, cuddles his cat, then dances around the room, delighted. When Millennials cancel plans appears at the bottom of the screen, accompanied by hashtags such as #lookafteryou and #self-care. The video, just one of countless memes featuring people revelling over cancelled plans, has been viewed more than three million times on TikTok, and illustrates a profound shift currently happening across generations.
Last year, Princeton University sociologist Patrick Sharkey published a paper titled Homebound which charted an “astounding change” in the time spent at home for every subset of the population and across virtually all daily activities. In the past two decades, time spent at home has risen among American adults by more than 690 minutes in a typical week. In the UK, the average time spent inside our homes daily is 18 hours and 43 minutes. Technology is shifting us away from the communal activities we once enjoyed outside our homes, leading us to an increasingly insular, home-based experience.
In recent years, I’ve experienced the pull of wanting to stay home far more. Not only in myself, but in my family and friends and society at large. We used to go to the movies to watch a film – now we flop on the sofa to stream an entire series. Restaurants were places to enjoy meals together, but now, on-demand delivery services bring anything to our doorsteps. We used to go to dances, clubs and bars to meet people, but now dating apps and flirting with flame emojis mean you don’t have to leave the house to find a partner or to have sex (the virtual kind). We used to go to offices to meet and interact with colleagues in person, but today, 25% of all global employees work fully remotely. Even worshipping rituals have become more homebound, with a quarter of Britons watching religious services online.
Our minds and bodies were not designed to be self-contained, on-demand, homebound individuals. We’re social animals.
Our innate instincts to leave the house, explore and take risks together in person are being rewired and numbed. But our minds and bodies were not designed to be self-contained, on-demand, homebound individuals. We’re social animals meant to live in groups and depend on others for wellbeing. In modern culture, though, where the bias is to overemphasise competition and individualism, dependency has become almost a dirty word. When I help someone down at my local allotment and they give me some fresh vegetables as thanks, it allows for reciprocation – and those small, simple moments of cooperation are needed for trust to flourish.
In this light, technology can be seen as an evolutionary trap for collective trust, a modern invention hijacking an ancient need. My children, ages 11 and 13, have never known a world where they can’t get almost everything without ever needing to interact with another human. Gaming, shopping, scrolling, studying or working from home have undoubtedly brought their comforts, conveniences, and ready-made entertainment, but it’s not good for us. According to Sharkey’s research, increased time on home activities is tied with a “strong reduction” in self-reported wellbeing and happiness.
There are no Covid lockdowns to blame any more – we’re choosing to spend more time at home and by ourselves than in any other period since the 1960s, when official ‘Time Use’ surveys began across Europe, the UK and the US. Compared to 2003, people today spend 240 fewer hours a year connecting in-person with family, friends and co-workers. A decade ago, research showed the average British adult had 5.1 close friends. Now, it’s down to just 3.7 – a 27% drop. Even more worryingly, nearly one in 10 individuals say they now have no close friends at all. That’s a staggering 50% rise in a decade. The problem is so systemic that, in 2024, the World Health Organization founded a new Commission on Social Connection, calling it a “global health priority”.
We are the most hyper-connected group in human history, with the lowest levels of trust – in ourselves, others, our communities, information and institutions. So, what factors are driving this more insular, home-based way of life? And why are the consequences to human trust so essential to understand?
For the first time in human civilisation, more people – of all ages and across demographics – are living alone, some by choice, many not. The shift in living arrangements has implications in how people come together inside and outside their homes. It also shapes whether individuals perceive themselves as a self-contained unit or part of a wider interconnected whole.
Financial anxiety is also playing a significant role. It is harder to buy your own place, earn a decent wage, pay off crushing student debt and even retire at 65 – or, in some instances, ever be able to afford to stop working. If the price of a meal out, alcohol, a club and a taxi or train home has increased beyond your means, what choice is there but to stay home?
Unsurprisingly, changes to our daily patterns and behaviours during the pandemic accelerated shifts already underway. With tech as a mediator, it became easier to avoid the complexities and messiness of real-life interactions, and many of these habits of the pandemic have stuck. If you’re not interested in what’s being covered in a virtual meeting, just put it on mute. If you don’t agree with what’s being discussed in an online class, leave; nobody is likely to notice. If you don’t approve of exchanges on social media, delete the account. All these actions allow us to reduce or even remove friction in our relationships – but they also reinforce the illusion that, somehow, we can make the world more manageable and controllable through clicks alone.
The more technology eliminates friction from our lives, the more intolerant of friction we become. Frictionless design removes kinks, speed bumps and anything that slows us down. It helps us accomplish tasks with minimal cognition and effort and contact with each other. That might be wonderful for commerce, but not for social relationships. Soon, any interaction that requires waiting, patience or exertion becomes, well, annoying, and that’s why we ultimately become less forgiving of human friction. And I don’t just mean of outbursts on social media. I mean the healthy doubt, disagreement, disappointment and discomfort which are more likely to happen when interacting with real human beings in-person. In real life, conflict can’t be avoided by switching people off like an Alexa.
Lockdowns offer only a partial explanation of why we’ve become more anti-social. Like a sourdough starter that has slowly been fed over time, the homebound, phone-bound dynamic has been growing and responding to the environment for decades. In his book Bowling Alone, published in 2000, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam argued that technological advancements, notably the car and television, had led to decreased face-to-face interactions, a disintegration of communal ties and a more individualistic society.
Putnam also warned us about what happens when the shared spaces in which unrelated people convene and those organisations that anchor community life disintegrate – an erosion of social capital. In England today, local authorities spend nearly £330m less per year on parks and open spaces than a decade ago, which has led to the rapid deterioration of those spaces. According to the YMCA, investment in youth services in England and Wales has been cut by 70% in less than a decade, resulting in the closure of 750 youth centres. One library closure here, one local swimming pool there, another community hall closed… each of these many individual cuts breaks the lives and ties of an entire neighbourhood.
When we let our public spaces degrade, it’s a natural progression that social relations will follow. If there is nowhere to hang out, where do you stay? Home. Spatial isolation leads to social isolation, which leads to declining trust.
How did we create a culture where people feel intensely lonely yet hide from genuine human connections?
Beyond the causes we can see – costs, closures, solo living arrangements, pandemics – there are underlying forces that push us apart in ways we don’t quite fully appreciate until the impacts become visible. To understand the seismic shift happening to our lives, it’s helpful to observe these patterns through the lens of atomisation.
Imagine a large unit of something – your workplace, a family structure or a local neighbourhood. Atomisation is when that unit is continually broken down into smaller and smaller pieces. As the units get smaller, they gain more individual clarity, but their relationships with each other become weaker and eventually disintegrate. It’s difficult for trust, our social glue, to hold us together when it’s been stretched so far apart. Moreover, when we live in these atomised, individual units, it literally creates gaps – a dangerous trust vacuum that is open to being filled with catchy conspiracy theories, comforting biases and sleights of hand. A trust free-for-all, in other words. And so, we end up with what we can all feel: a society more detached, more divided and even more delusional.
All kinds of technologies – from cars to televisions, Walkmans to smartphones – have unintentionally made our lives more atomised and less intertwined. We’re constantly encouraged to focus more energy on optimising ourselves, to turn inwards and fix ourselves. While the positives of putting ourselves first can be significant, it risks framing #self-care as opting out. Don’t get me wrong, as a working parent with two full-on tweens, I know the restorative relief of a quiet evening home alone. But when we’re constantly bombarded with messages to retreat and to improve ourselves – whether through therapy, cold baths, green smoothies, meditation or makeovers – it can be easy to turn too far inwards.
Gradually, we become outwardly unconnected, indifferent and even hostile towards each other. When Abraham Maslow placed ‘self-actualisation’ at the top of his famous hierarchy of needs, he did not mean ‘selfish’ or ‘self-centred’. When we get lost in the mirror of our gaze, we can forget who we are without those grounding relationships.
The rise in a seemingly more insular home-based life is a byproduct, even a crisis of atomisation, caused by the ‘progress’ of technology. It’s happened so fast that we almost don’t realise how much we’ve broken up and separated ourselves from the larger units – the compounds and cultures, the families and communities – that make up a healthy society.
Is it too late to change course? I don’t know, but I’m still hopeful.
Get out. Generate some social electricity. We can transform communities and trust in our lives through the simple act of doing things together.
In St James Church in West Hampstead, London, a group of youngish people sit around talking, laughing and playing board games. But something noticeable is missing. There is not a single phone in sight. It’s one of many events held by the rapidly growing Offline Club, founded in the Netherlands in February 2024. What started as a local initiative has quickly become a global movement, with more than 1,000 cities worldwide asking for similar events to come to their area, according to co-founder Ilya Kneppelhout. These events radiate a longing for something communal, something simple, that has been lost.
Across the UK, book clubs and board game cafes have reported a similar boom, reflecting a renewed interest in tangible social experiences that offer people a chance to make meaningful connections. There are even signs of shifts in online dating: the likes of Bumble and We Met IRL (‘In Real Life’) are hosting events from tennis tournaments to cooking classes to chess nights, marketed on the promise to “meet up, chat and make moves in person”.
Research shows we experience the greatest joy when we do things collectively in-person together. Those feelings of communion we get at a music festival or a wedding, marching in a protest or, my personal favourite, sliding into the beguiling beat of oontz, oontz, oontz on the dance floor. Pioneering sociologist Émile Durkheim described these experiences as “collective effervescence”, that is, the social electricity generated when we come physically together through shared action or engage in a shared purpose.
Part of fixing the problem is simply reminding ourselves of the benefits we feel when we’re communally together. Don’t shut the door at home and pretend you’re happier this way. Don’t text a friend at the last minute to cancel because it’s easy to do so. Don’t switch in-person for Zoom because it feels more convenient. Don’t say something in an online comment you wouldn’t dare to face-to-face. Don’t avoid the messiness and discomfort of being with friends in person. Don’t let young kids switch playgrounds for a PlayStation. Don’t let the precious empty spaces of life become filled with solitary apps and algorithms. Don’t let your communities become purely virtual. Don’t only trust people because they are just like you. Don’t let your outside physical world regress into a homebound one. And don’t let life’s friction be wholly mediated by ‘seamless’ technology.
For most people, these things are largely within their control. So, if you can, go! Get up. Get out. Generate some social electricity. We can transform communities and trust in our lives through the simple act of doing things together outside our homes.
Rachel Botsman will show a new art installation called Roots of Trust at the London Design Biennale at Somerset House in June 2025. The piece illuminates and reimagines a historical design artefact that forever changed people’s working lives – the first known organisational chart, created in 1855.
Rachel Botsman is a leading expert on trust in the modern world. She lectures at Oxford University and is the author of three critically acclaimed books, What’s Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust? and How To Trust and Be Trusted.
Illustrations by Marcin Wolski, an illustrator and graphic designer working in media, advertising and editorial illustration for clients around the globe. He lives and creates in Sopot, Poland.
This article first appeared in RSA Journal Issue 1 2025.
