Too many people are stuck at home – it’s time for a war on isolation

Britain then: a clock radio, tea before the bus, a journey into work and lunch bought from somebody who knew whether or not you wanted brown sauce. Plans were made on the landline and therefore made well in advance. Friday at the pub, Saturday in town or at somebody’s house, Sunday with family. Four television channels, shops that closed, no WhatsApp, no Netflix, no Deliveroo and no way of cancelling at the last minute without hearing the disappointment in somebody’s voice.

Britain now. I wake up and reach for the device that contains my news, work, friends, money and politics. My first meeting can happen before I have properly left my bedroom. Lunch can arrive at the door. Friends remain permanently present in a group chat even when I have not seen them for weeks. Friday can move seamlessly from laptop to takeaway to television. I can be in contact with almost everyone I know while bumping into almost nobody.

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A person living “then” was not automatically happier. Work was often more rigid, communities could be judgemental and plenty about the past deserved to disappear. But an ordinary day was structured around encounters: smiling at the bus driver (this may be more of a northern thing, I admit), the colleague, the shopkeeper, the neighbour, the friend of a friend at a party you nearly did not attend who ends up being your wife.

Today, most of those encounters are optional and in some cases not ideal. The sofa is warmer, the delivery app makes you salivate and the sofa has never once asked why you are late, or if those are the same track suit bottoms from yesterday.

We usually discuss this as loneliness, but loneliness is only part of it. Loneliness is wanting connection and not having it. The more interesting shift in my view is towards lives that are more private, home-centred and controlled.

Sometimes that is exactly what people want. Solitude can be peaceful and liberating. Nobody needs a minister knocking on the door because they have chosen a night in. The political question is whether isolation is a choice, now that leaving home has become expensive, the places we once went have disappeared and work, entertainment and friendship increasingly arrive through the same screen.

I recently watched a video about modern dating by the Youtuber Max Fisher. Its most interesting point was not really about dating, but about a “culture of isolation” in which activities that once placed us among other people have been replaced by solitary, convenient alternatives.

Dating was one consequence: fewer parties, fewer drinks after work, fewer friends of friends means fewer accidental meetings. But the argument isn’t limited to romance. A survey that monitors how Americans use their time found that time spent hosting or attending social events fell by 50% between 2003 and 2024. Among 15-to-24-year-olds, it fell by about 70%. What happens to politics when people increasingly experience society from inside their own homes?

You cannot talk about isolation without mentioning the pandemic. For months, the responsible citizen was the person who stayed inside: taking meetings on Zoom, doing Zumba in the living room and maintaining friendships through messages and video calls.

I find myself more introverted now than I was before the pandemic. I do not necessarily think that is a bad thing. I enjoy spending more time at home, ordering a takeaway and settling into a Netflix series. But I would be lying if I pretended that was who I was before Covid. So many people I have spoken to describe a similar change. Perhaps you recognise it too.

During our research earlier this year into young people not in education, employment or training, one young man told us that he had continued living as though the pandemic had never ended, isolating himself at home for years. He was only just beginning to find his way back into employment.

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The housing crisis in the UK makes the change much harder to ignore. A recent IFS study found that at 25, 43% of those born around 1960 owned a home; among those born between 1997 and 2001, just 15% did. Today, 43% of 25-year-olds still live with their parents. One generation reached 25 with a home of its own, while my generation is far more likely still to be waiting for the space and independence that adulthood was meant to bring.

I find myself making versions of that calculation all the time. Do I pay more to live alone, with a clean bathroom, a usable kitchen and enough control over the space to invite people round, or save money in a house-share and have more left to enjoy the city? The housing crisis increasingly forces people to choose between a private life they enjoy and a public life they can afford.

Andy Burnham’s first moves as prime minister could be seen as tackling isolation. Cutting business rates for pubs, clubs and live music venues, alongside the £2 bus-fare cap, would help keep open the places where people meet and make them easier to reach. Politics cannot create friendship, but it can make social life less expensive.

But pubs are only one part of the answer. People also need homes large enough to invite friends into, buses that still run when the evening ends, and libraries, parks, sports clubs and youth centres that have not been hollowed out. Staying in should be something we choose, not what happens because everything outside is too expensive or has shut.

Perhaps it is time to go to war on isolation. Not by ordering people to socialise, but by rebuilding the places and freedoms that make it possible.