Everybody loves long posts about amateur behavioral science theories, right?
Back when I was working retail before I went into librarianship I considered getting a degree in sociology, but stopped when we got a new employee, an incredibly depressed woman with a masterâs degree in sociology that said it really wasnât a good career option (as proved by her new job working 32 hours a week at OfficeMax). I still think itâs a really interesting subject, except academic writing is always so dry and pedanticâI donât mind it as much when itâs describing hard science or linguistics or something you can really study, but I was just trying to figure out if there have already been papers written hypothesizing that online socializing might qualify as a âthird placeâ and everything was so thick with jargon and theory trying to describe incredibly soft science that Iâm kind of glad I decided not to try for it full-time. (Plus Iâd have to work for a college and I really donât want to teach.)
See, there is a consistent trend in human behavior where the happiest people have three places in their lives: home, work (or school if youâre a student), and some third place you go to hang out with people with similar tastes/interests/opinions where you can talk openly about the other two. âPlacesâ is a vague definition, I think it means more about ways of thinking or acting, almost more like a personaâyour dorm collectively is a âplaceâ that includes both your private room and the commons area, since there will be similar people there and the activities will be closely related, while you will probably go outside the dorm to have a real study group, making it a separate âplaceâ.
My theory here is that online spaces are doing the job of a Third Place, granting us a group of people gathered by choice for communal discussions, just like traditional Third Places like grampaâs poker night at the VFW, 90s geeks gathering at the local game shop for âMagic: the Gatheringâ matches, or wine momsâ mimosa brunches. The fact that we can get to our Third Place from anywhereâthrough apps or even just a social group textâcould be why mobile communications are so addictive. (Compare to Great Uncle Louie saying âugh, waitâll the boys at the Elk Lodge hear about this!â every time somebody corrects him for saying something racist. If he could communicate instantly with The Boys and get their silent commentary on his every thought, do really think he wouldnât?) It could also explain why young people are abandoning Facebook: by forcing us to use publicly verifiable identities and increasing visibility to our families (First Place) and current/future employers (Second Place) they disqualified it as a usable Third Place.
Sidenote: this is also why when I see unemployed people with depression on here, I encourage them to find a place to volunteer if they can handle it. (In this case itâs more like theyâre missing the Second Place, somewhere for some tasks to deliver some of that sweet, sweet dopamine.) I havenât heard if anyoneâs articulated why having three places seems to have such a benefit to happiness, but it seems to.
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