Monday, May 19, 2025
In New York, across the country and around the world, people are experiencing a loneliness epidemic that humankind has never seen before. I believe this is due to the fact that many people are emotionally further apart, even if they think they feeler closer together and more connected with the use of technology.
During the global pandemic in 2020, a spotlight shined on how lonely the human species had become in the modern era. One thing about pandemics is that they don’t actually bring down a society; they just reveal the cracks that already exist within it. Some of the cracks the pandemic highlighted were evidence of the breakdown in how people communicate and interact with one another.
In a podcast episode about adult friendships, author Mel Robbins refers to the “Great Scattering,” which, she says, occurs at different times in people’s lives. One of the first great scatterings she refers to takes place when people graduate from college and start their adult lives. Typically, from grade school through high school and college, many of us are in environments that offer proximity with one another, as we mark the same milestones and share life events.
Once those environments shift and proximity becomes more limited, people may begin to feel lost and confused about how to find friends and interact with people who aren’t in the same cohort or phase of life.
After these great scatterings, many adults struggle to find people who have similar interests. It’s also a challenge to find and connect with others in person rather than behind a screen. Most people have two main “places” in their lives, their homes and their workplaces. But it’s in a third place that there is the opportunity to make friends, connect and combat the feeling of loneliness.
My third place is my local Rotary club. It’s a place outside both work and home where I have the chance to meet like-minded people and engage in shared activities. There I’ve met so many people from various backgrounds, and we all come together to connect, with the common goal of sharing fellowship and giving back to our community.
This kind of third place allows you to take a break from your regular day-to-day life and become part of something bigger than yourself.
I know I have combated, and still combat, loneliness, but there is significantly less now that I have that third place to go and just be, and connect with others face to face. It gives me a sense of creativity and belonging, and a much-needed break from the daily stresses of life.
One’s third place should align with one’s own values. It can be anywhere that offers informal social interaction, connection and a shared activity — a community organization, a sport, a book club, volunteer work, an art class, a gardening club, a bowling league. In a third place, there’s a positive sum for all instead of a zero sum for just one.
The connections we make in these third places help build character, and connect us to our neighbors and to a community, which reminds us that we’re not alone. I would advise anyone to take that first step, and find that place. It will make you healthier and less stressed, and remind you that you’re part of a bigger world.
For thousands of years, humans traveled together, because it was safer to be in a group than to be on their own in the wild. In today’s society, social media and smartphones give us the illusion of being more connected, yet they often leave us feeling more alone, as if in the wild. Humans eventually learned that we had to come in from the wild, and form civilizations and societies, because we were safer together.
We need contact and in-person interaction, but modern society is a technological wilderness. I believe it’s time more of us left the wilderness and found that third place, to gather and once again build community. That’s how the human race can become more civilized, as our ancestors did thousand of year ago. Becoming part of a community will be the beginning of the end of the loneliness epidemic in the modern era.
Now tell me, what will your third place be?
Jordan Pecora is president of the Freeport-Merrick Rotary Club.
