This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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Why eat out when you can DoorDash? In an interview from 2021, Elon Musk discusses how his son, Saxon, who is “sort of autistic,” was always confused about why the family would go out to dinner once a week. Finally, Musk said, Saxon realized the reason people go out to restaurants is to meet new people.
“You can get the same restaurant food delivered,” Musk said. “You can call your friends over, but you know what you can’t get unless you go to a restaurant is hanging out with strangers. So we actually like hanging out with strangers.”
But not everyone likes hanging out with strangers. Ghost kitchens, which are professional, delivery-only food preparation infrastructures, are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. Removing the “inconvenient” and “inefficient” dine-in space, these kitchens are expected to make up “half of the market share in both drive-thru and takeaway foodservice sectors” by 2030, according to OysterLink. There are currently 7,606 ghost kitchens in the U.S. Even Chick-fil-A, known for its southern hospitality and values, has opened its own.
Americans are opting for quick, easy, stay-at-home meals. Millions of us use DoorDash every month instead of visiting local restaurants. Sixty-four percent of Gen Z get takeout or delivery weekly or more often, according to TouchBistro. This generation spends 20% of their grocery budget online compared to baby boomers, who only spend 10% online. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic only further normalized this behavior.
Whether we know it or not, our habits of ordering food and sitting in front of the TV alone contribute to isolation and disconnection. I am not innocent in this. Often, I go for take-out because its more “convenient” or I’m just “too busy.” But these statements are less of an uncontrollable reality and more of a priority issue.
We have all heard that America is suffering a loneliness epidemic. In an age when there are more ways to connect than ever, we have never been more disconnected. As of last year, 54% of adults felt isolated, 50% felt left out, and another 50% felt they lacked companionship often or sometimes, according to an American Psychological Association poll.
The solution might be easier than you think. You need to go outside and talk to strangers.
Micro-interactions with people we don’t know seem more rare than ever. At the grocery store, self-service machines have been on the rise as people expect to make their next visit to the supermarket swift, controlled, and without the annoyance of an exhausted employee. According to WeVend, a payment processing platform specializing in self-service businesses, self-service kiosks are in high demand with 66% of U.S. customers saying they prefer automated interaction over a human one. I remember seeing my first completely automated coffee shop in an airport: Robo Cafe. The adoption of, investment in, and demand for these automated machines is increasing; a lack of human interaction is in high demand.
However, research on the indispensable nature of interactions with strangers is eye-opening. Something as simple as a quick comment, small joke, or friendly smile can reduce loneliness. In one study, participants reported a more positive commute to work when instructed to talk with a stranger compared to those who weren’t. Another study in Starbucks found that when asked to have a “warm, genuine interaction (compared to an ‘efficient’ one)” with the barista, people had an elevated and positive mood partly because they felt “a greater sense of belonging.”
In fact, research typically finds that interactions with strangers is beneficial, contrary to many fears of rejection. And these fears of rejection are not really based on reality. Research shows that a stranger rejecting or shutting you down does not occur very often. Also, the fears of screwing up an interaction — awkward silence, fumbling with your words — are not the norm.
What we need is to stop fearing social interactions and give ourselves the opportunity to meet our neighbors.
“Slaughterhouse-Five” author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. knew what this meant. He used to argue with his wife about buying envelopes. “You’re not a poor man,” she would say. “You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?”
“And so I pretend not to hear her,” Vonnegut said. “And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.”
So many Americans are lonely, depressed, and anxious because we lack purpose and human connection. If we continue to replace everything with AI and automation for the sake of efficiency, we will become optimized, selfish, and aimless.
Now, self-service machines and AI are not evil and are not inevitably going to destroy us. They don’t have agency. We do. We can find new ways to interact with people and strangers. We can choose to make hard decisions. The issue is that this technology makes it incredibly easy to avoid doing the hard thing.
We need to be more intentional than ever about making space for human interaction in our everyday lives. That means embracing a little friction and remembering that, like Musk, “we actually like hanging out with strangers.”
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