Newsletter | Interrupting the Human Doom Loop
In her excellent article for Slate, “Welcome to the Human Doom Loop,” the writer and urban policy specialist Diana Lind describes and – crucially – names a phenomenon that should be familiar to readers of our newsletter. Writes Lind:
“Throughout the pandemic, the media focused on the idea of the “urban doom loop,” in which remote work would kill downtowns, triggering a downward spiral of reduced services that would cause people to leave cities. What went overlooked has turned out to be the bigger and even more consequential story: the human doom loop, a cycle in which people stop connecting in real life, reducing the quality of in-person activities and the physical realm itself, further discouraging IRL activities, and so on. Nearly five years after the pandemic, it’s not the real estate we need to worry about. It’s us.”
What’s important about stepping back, seeing the big picture, recognizing the dynamics of the situation, and seeing where it all ends up is that it gives us a chance to forestall the consequences – a chance to interrupt the cycle. After all, the beauty of any feedback loop is that it can, in principle, be reversed: today's doom loop can become tomorrow’s virtuous cycle. Part of the challenge of the Human Doom Loop is that as people spend more time at home and less time in public spaces, it is entirely rational for businesses to offer services to create better experiences for the home. So we get better entertainment, on demand 24/7, restaurant quality food delivered to our doorsteps, and all the shopping we can afford. Likewise, it’s harder to justify investing in public spaces that people no longer frequent. And while Lind doesn’t mention it, as people interact less with other humans, they often opt for services that enable them to avoid them. DoorDash’s own research found that 18% of users of meal delivery apps reported using them because they “didn’t want to see or talk to anyone.” Again, it’s great business to meet that need, but when you recognize the reinforcing feedback loop, it doesn’t seem like a great idea for all of us collectively.
So how do we interrupt the Human Doom Loop? One approach involves people simply demanding more, pursuing – and even creating – alternatives. Lind shares examples of Gen Zers choosing running clubs over dating apps, social infrastructure startups like All One Thing and nonprofit initiatives like Project Gather. The dating app Hinge has recently partnered with our friends at the Foundation for Social Connection on an initiative to get users to spend more IRL time with friends. Another approach is challenging entrepreneurs to create and build for worlds that could be rather than for the world that exists today. An alternative to building a business that capitalizes on people spending more time at home is to build a business that lures people out of their homes. For example, John Hanke founded Niantic – a top scorer in the Building H Index – in order to build games that could get players up and moving outdoors, with other people. It’s risky, to be sure, but we need more entrepreneurs who create products and services that draw us together in real, physical spaces. And a third approach is, of course, public policy. Municipalities can choose to compete with the convenience and comforts of home by investing in compelling social infrastructure (and Lind cites New York’s hiring of a “chief public realm officer” to transform streetscapes to encourage residents to get out and about). In reflecting on her own experience with remote work, Lind notes “It turns out that the simple obligation of going to a workplace, shop, or school every day brought positive externalities that are vanishing from our lives.” (Emphasis added). Policymakers could focus on these externalities and create incentives that start to tilt the market back in a prosocial direction – rewarding businesses that create more in-person social opportunities.
In her article, Lind picks up on a key part of the dynamic: “Five years later, the convenience, price, and time savings of remote activities have made them fixtures of postpandemic life.” It’s a reminder of the power of efficiency in shaping behaviors and how the market optimizes around it. People respond to efficiency and it clearly has great value, but as we pointed out in the 2024 Building H Index report, more and more services are now eliminating human interaction in the name of efficiency, because, well, talking to other human beings is not terribly efficient. We can measure the time saved in a drive-thru when an AI takes an order instead of a teenager from the neighborhood. We can measure the increased throughput when a restaurant shifts its orders from face-to-face interactions to apps. It’s harder to measure the warmth of feeling that comes from a pleasant interaction and a shared laugh. But to break the cycle, we need to value it.
Lind ends with a caution and an implied challenge:
“We are rushing into a future of widespread A.I., autonomous vehicles, virtual-reality headsets, and mixed-reality apps. For all the talk of moving past the pandemic, the future actually looks a lot like 2020, when so many of us were stuck inside our houses and glued to our screens. We are at the beginning of a shift from a physical, public, and social world to a more digital and private one, accompanied by the instability that attends all technological revolutions. But it’s not too late to do something about it.”
It’s not too late. But we need to get off autopilot and choose to prioritize it.
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