Why Don't We Hang Out Anymore?
And other thoughts around the dissolution of cultivated community and tender togetherness in the digital age
I grew up a certified cul-de-sac, suburbia-dwelling child of the 90s.
Summertime stretched into infinite swaths of sunshine, with days spent running barefoot from yard to yard to play with friends unannounced, riding bikes until the street lights came on and attending block parties laden with neighborhood gossip shared between the moms.
I always called those moms my other moms.
Some so frequently visited our home to share an afternoon coffee and conversation with my mom that I felt they played a hand in raising me, too.
It seemed like someone was always dropping in to visit us in those hazy days – just to say hello, to drop off a cookbook on loan, to enjoy a coffee after church – with no real reason.
And I loved it.
As a child, I felt so safe and warm and enriched by this sense of community, openness and willingness to share life together.
I never wanted it to end.
I arrived to college a decade and some-odd years later, intentionally choosing to attend a small liberal arts school in the middle of rural Georgia.
The cute town paired with the sense of community was enthralling, and I was fortunate to strike gold with roommates.
We made our rounds, dorm room to dorm room, just dropping in for no reason other than to say hello, spend some time together, and maybe flirt for fun.
It felt good – spending time together for reasons we couldn’t articulate.
Some of the most memorable moments of my life occurred in this small town, although they would sound mundane to most:
The Saturday morning hangouts after a night downtown, where we’d stumble bleary-eyed out of bed and into the living room to recap the previous night’s antics and stuff ourselves full of buttery gas station biscuits deep into the afternoon.
The grocery runs where we’d stretch our shoestring budgets, sampling new flavors of instant ramen and $5 bottles of pink wine.
The aimless drives with the windows down and radio blaring, baring our souls and hopes and dreams and desires to each other just because we could – and very much wanted to.
We dropped in on each other, took care of each other, stopped by without notice and made plans at the drop of a hat, the start of our 20s dripping with adventure, abundance and – most of all – togetherness.
I graduated college in 2013, and I’d downloaded a new app called Instagram the year prior.
I loved uploading blurry, filtered moments of my life to the app – and some of my photos even garnered “likes” from friends and campus acquaintances.
After we all stood together one Saturday morning and tossed our caps into the sky, I packed up my 1997 Honda Accord and drove away from the liberal arts school in the cute town in the middle of rural Georgia.
Life ramped up at lightning speed: a move to the city, an internship and a job offer later I was living out the life I’d always envisioned for 20s.
But I was very alone.
I found myself returning home from a demanding advertising job to an empty apartment, the living room no longer brimming with best friends, biscuits and banter.
I found myself scrolling on Instagram to fill the void, gleaning voyeuristic glimpses of my loved ones’ lives without taking the initiative to actually check in.
I found myself sharing a digitally curated version of my life to garner more empty, hollow likes to fill the void of aloneness.
I found myself witnessing my friends doing that same – it’s just what you did.
And for a very long time I lived in that shallow, desolate dimension of peering in through the digital window on everyone I loved, assuming that we were all just doing fine. Deep phone conversations replaced with double-tapped photos; thoughtful, heartfelt dialogue swapped for three-word, pithy comments.
My days look so different now from the fast-paced, career-driven years of my 20s. I have a fresh baby in my arms most of the time, and the fly-by-night friends of that fleeting era have all but fallen away.
I’m left with an intimate circle of incredible friends who know me in the real, messy, honest ways that matter.
Two years ago I pulled the plug on all things digital in my life in a major way.
I couldn’t bear the thin veneer plastered over my real life any longer.
I still frequent social media, I still love Instagram – but not in the same surface-level ways that I used to, and often find myself taking breaks for weeks or even months at a time to come up for air after scrolling through it all.
But, still, I crave community in ways that are difficult to articulate.
The other day I thought about how odd it is that our lives have become so full of noise and commitments and “things” that it’s become so commonplace to…
Schedule plans to simply spend time with one another weeks – if not months – in advance.
Need to have a concrete reason to even make plans in the first place, with hangouts often requiring a special occasion as an impetus.
Not drop by and check in on each other just because, as my childhood neighbors so often did.
Not pick up the phone just to say hi, to see how we’re doing and if we need any support – emotional, or otherwise.
Since when did we start to assume that we’re all so busy that we can’t “bother” each other with connection?
Since when did we need such big, important reasons to spend time together in community?
Since when did we become so disconnected that it feels odd – imposing, even – to check in on each other in the caring, neighborly ways that we used to?
I’m writing all of these inquisitions directly to myself – because I’m guilty of them all.
I want us to all start hanging out again.
Please.
It feels scary, strange and odd to even write that – but it’s true all the same.
I’m ready for us to collectively rip off the digital Band-Aid that’s held us all together so flimsily over the past decade and dive back into true community, connection and humanness.
Here’s to finding the courage, the confidence and the community to make this innermost wish a beautiful reality.
(The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m including a link to my Instagram here, but for the sake of cultivating community with others who crave connection in a similar way, here’s a little slice of who I am outside of Substack).