The loneliness crisis long predates the acceleration of telework adoption during COVID, and the job has never been peoples' primary place for socializing.
How can a place where you spend over a 1/3 of your life NOT be a place for socializing? A large amount of Americans date coworkers and office relationships are absolutely the norm:
Not the parent but I'll do my best to make a good counter argument.
The job should not be your place of socializing. People have opinions, make jokes, have bad days, get upset at each other, misbehave and so on. These things are fine, they are human.
However, these things aren't appropriate for work. My coworkers don't get to choose me, they are stuck with me. I try very hard to be mild, polite and gentle at work.
That is very much not who I am as a person. My friends know this and are fine with it, but they also get to choose to be my friend (or not).
I literally feel like I can't have a real friendship or genuine social interaction at work. I might exchange pleasantries and try to make polite small talk, but it's not worth the risk of making someone else feel alienated or offended.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/one-in-three-americans-has-d...