Every time someone says we’re in a loneliness epidemic, the advice sounds suspiciously individual: join a gym, download a friend app, go to therapy, try harder. But what if loneliness isn’t a personal failure at all?
The U.S. Surgeon General has declared it a public health crisis. Research has shown that chronic loneliness is associated with depression, cardiovascular disease, and even increased mortality risk. Headlines warn that Americans have fewer friends than ever before and give us advice on how to make more friends, as though the issue is simply our unwillingness or our lack of know-how. We debate whether smartphones ruined us, whether remote work isolated us, whether dating apps replaced real intimacy.
But what if we are asking the wrong question? Instead of asking why individuals feel lonely, maybe we should be asking where the infrastructure for belonging went.
For decades, sociologist Ray Oldenburg argued that healthy societies depend on “third places,” informal public gathering spaces outside home and work where people interact regularly and build relationships. (Think: neighborhood bars, bowling leagues, churches, hobby groups, volunteer organizations.)
“Third places” are places where we can connect with others that isn’t our home (our first place) or our workplace (our second place). A “third place” is where we once bumped into people over and over again until they turned into real friends in places like bars, clubhouses, or church. Third places are now on the decline as fewer people go to bars, join in-person social clubs or associations, or attend religious services.
Third places matter because they create the routine, low-stakes contact that keeps people from drifting into isolation.
We tend to frame loneliness as an internal feeling, something happening inside individual people. But what if loneliness is less about emotion and more about environment? What if it’s the predictable outcome of dismantling the spaces that once made repeated, in-person connection routine? When we began studying BDSM communities, I expected to be writing about sex. Instead, I found myself documenting something much more structural: networks that many mainstream spaces no longer seem able to generate.
The majority of participants were embedded in some form of community, whether online or in person. A substantial proportion had close friends within that community. Many reported receiving emotional support, practical help with moving or repairs, even financial assistance or job referrals from people they met through those networks. The more involved someone was in repeated, face-to-face gatherings, the denser their network became and the more tangible support they reported receiving.
That pattern should not surprise anyone familiar with friendship research. Sociologists of friendship have long shown that close ties rarely form because someone sets out to “make friends.” They form through repeated exposure, shared activity, and gradual self-disclosure. You show up and see and talk to the same people. Then, you reveal a little more of yourself each time and so trust accumulates. That is how social capital is built.
What struck me was not that a kink community could generate friendship. It was that it had preserved something many mainstream spaces have lost: structured, recurring, interest-based, in-person interaction among adults.
It would be easy to assume that the more someone invests in a stigmatized subculture, the narrower their world becomes. That isn’t what we found. The people most active in in-person BDSM spaces were somewhat more likely to also participate in other hobby and interest-based groups. So, community didn’t appear to replace other ties. If anything, it coexisted with, and perhaps reinforced, broader social engagement.
This mirrors broader research. Studies consistently show that participation in voluntary associations is associated with higher life satisfaction, greater trust, and stronger mental health outcomes. In other words, social capital is cumulative: the more networks you are part of, the more resources you have access to, both emotional and material.
If we want to understand why so many adults feel disconnected, it is not enough to tell people to practice self-care, get a therapist, or put down their phones. Those interventions may help individuals cope, but they don’t rebuild infrastructure.
We have quietly dismantled many of the spaces where adults repeatedly encounter one another around shared interests. We often work alone, only to go home and stream and scroll alone. Even when we gather, it is often one-off and transactional rather than sustained and embedded, and then we wonder why we feel lonely.
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