I Hope This Pandemic Has Taught Us That Products Can’t Replace People
By: Joe Duncan
Tags: Relationships, Society, Science, Psychology, Culture

Relationships | Culture

I Hope This Pandemic Has Taught Us That Products Can’t Replace People

We are social creatures

Photo by Dương Nhân from Pexels

Have you found yourself spending endless time on shopping apps over the course of the pandemic, either window shopping or actually buying stuff, just getting lost in the sea of products out there, hoping to find something that will make you just a little bit happier?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent more time in an app like Amazon or eBay than your dwindling checking account is comfortable with (don’t worry, your secrets are safe with me).

According to Adobe’s analytics, by April this year, buy-online-pickup-in-store, also known as BOPIS, sales had surged a whopping 208% from last year. Overall e-commerce rose a massive 25% in just two weeks in March 2020.

Vivek Pandya, Adobe’s Digital Insights Manager, told Forbes, “According to our data, it would’ve taken between 4 and 6 years to get to the levels that we saw in May if the growth continued at the same levels it was at for the past few years.”

But switching from in-person shopping to online is only part of the equation. While some of us are converting from brick-and-mortar stores to digital apps and online retailers, others are shopping more in total because they feel lonely, sad, and isolated. The COVID-19 pandemic has only deepened another epidemic: the loneliness epidemic.

And there’s vicious cycle at work…

COVID-19 forces us to rely on social media for our interaction, social media and a lack of interaction can possibly deepen loneliness, and loneliness makes many of us shop more in search of fulfillment — but shopping never really fills the emptiness.

Why do we do this? Do we secretly believe that we can’t be happy without the fanciest chair massager or the coolest new tech toy? The answer seems to be both yes and no.

Looking around at American advertising literature, you’d be tempted to believe that our goods are what make us happy in life. In fact, we’ve erected an entire society predicated on this idea. It’s the idea that buying the right objects is the golden ticket to happiness. The standard model of consumer culture, as I call it.

It’s a model of life complete with pushy sales guys and telemarketing callers, people everywhere who try to leverage this fundamental and dogmatic idea that you can’t be happy without a certain product or service. More than this, the goal of advertising, and our culture at large, is often to convince you that just buying a certain product or service will solve all of your life’s woes.

But is that really true?

There’s quite a bit of evidence says otherwise. And some have suggested that even the purchasing of goods, not even services or experiences, are done with the belief that they’ll inevitably lead to positive social encounters in the future.

Buying things, so the theory goes, only helps us insofar as we think they’ll be instrumental in creating or maintaining human connections for us at some point down the road. At the bottom of all consumption is the desire to be loved and accepted.

Steve Quartz is the co-author of the book Cool: How the Brain’s Hidden Quest for Cool Drives Our Economy and Shapes Our World, and his theories fit nicely with the indescribable feelings that I think so many of us are feeling right now.

Some of the very first human ornaments in the form of jewelry was made approximately 70,000 years ago. These ornaments are thought to have symbolized membership in certain human tribes. Much more than a decorative feature alone, they helped people to feel like they belonged to a like-minded group of people they could trust and count on. They were icons that symbolized the interconnectedness of the group.

In his research, Quartz came to the conclusion that most of the products that drive our consumer economy are based on the perceived social value we think they’ll yield. It’s not about the intrinsic value of the pleasure so much as the perceived status and sense of belonging we believe we’ll receive from most human purchases. As Quartz says:

We can do this because our medial prefrontal cortex works as a sort of social calculator that monitors our perceptions of other people’s judgments of us, a sort of self-esteem inner gauge. It creates our basic need to feel the face-to-face admiration and respect we obtain in groups. In fact, psychologists have discovered that our happiness depends more on this feeling of esteem and respect than on our socioeconomic status.

Quartz continues:

In fact, much of the economic value of products today lies in their impact on our brain’s mostly implicit estimate of how they impact our social identity….We found that boosts in our social status also strongly activate the nucleus accumbens, a critical part of the brain’s reward system that’s implicated in almost all forms of addiction. Other studies with college students found that they value self-esteem boosts even more than sex! But I would urge you not to view these as some misbegotten vanity. Feeling esteemed and respected by others is a basic and universal human need that makes possible the human bonds that underlie cooperative human social life. It’s no surprise that it taps into the brain’s most powerful reward systems.

And now that the pandemic has locked us in for months on end, the flaws in the standard model of consumerism are becoming exposed to even greater degrees, as we all sit alone and isolated, unable to engage in the meaningful activities we once were able to with ease.

Most of us find ourselves plagued by this haunting feeling that something isn’t quite right, even if we’re conveniently shopping from home with free same-day delivery.

And I think that feeling of unease is the fact that our natural social reward systems have been interrupted.

The products themselves aren’t enough to provide the joy people get from consumption without the ability to share their experiences with others.

Usually when we buy something, say a new dress or an interesting t-shirt, we do so with the implication that the people we care about will give us approval for it. From heavy metal band t-shirts to Sunday church outfits, humans crave interaction from the products they consume, as Quartz pointed out.

When we have our outings and engage with other people, seeing the smiles on their face, engaging in the kinds of chatter we enjoy, we receive positive feedback.

Ah, validation, at last!

But now that we’re far removed from one another, socially isolated and physically distanced, that feedback system has become dramatically interrupted. The Internet is no substitute for in-person validation and a sense of belonging. And this transcends the fashion industry.

As I write this story, I’m enjoying a delicious plate of mango habanero cauliflower wings. I’m watching an entertaining NFL football game on my iMac screen in a brand new comfortable chair. By all material metrics, I’ve got the life. And while all of these things are great, I still feel like something is missing. It’s not the same as sports were pre-pandemic, as any sports fan should know. What’s missing is the human element.

Athletes play in nearly empty stadiums for atomized crowds-of-one huddled around screens, scattered about like autumn leaves just beginning to fall. There’s no cohesion, there’s no sense of connection that drives the social experience.

It’s not the same without the crowd, the friends jumping up and down and screaming about the scores and more. The excitement is missing. It’s watered down. The experience is more sterile.

And the same goes for our eating. Food is a universal human bonding experience and it has been since prehistoric men and women bonded over the fires that kept them warm, safe, and alive.

And while I won’t say that it’s a bad thing to eat alone, it’s a wonderful experience to treat yourself to a restaurant all alone, doesn’t it become a little problematic eating alone every single night? It does. It’s not quite the same without the social connection that drives our consumption, be it the consumption of food, professional sports, or fashion.

When we feel loneliness, and our culture doesn’t facilitate reasonable outlets to solve the problem of social isolation, we often buy things secretly hoping we’ll feel more connected, only to be let down by the fact that products can’t replace people. Usually for me, this just makes the feeling of loneliness worse.

Did you know the World Health Organization has declared loneliness as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day? Well, they have, calling it the silent pandemic. And social isolation has been long believed to be the single biggest risk factor for human violence.

In reality, we need each other. We all need to feel a sense of belonging that helps us stay grounded, feel connected, and to understand ourselves through the refractive lens of the perspective of another. While having access to goods and services most likely increases human happiness, it can only do so when we are able to find the joy of sharing the experiences they bring us with others.

That’s my takeaway from all of this and it’s what I hope our society has learned from this pandemic, among other things. That no matter how much we try to force them to, products just can’t replace people. We’re social creatures in need of both love and individual significance. Neither of these things are possible alone and in a vacuum.

I think it’s time for a renaissance in humanism after this pandemic lets up, one where we share with one another like never before. Let’s cut the shit and stop pretending that objects make us happy.

Humans need love.