Have you noticed that there is almost nowhere left to just “be” anymore? If you want to hang out with friends outside of your cramped dorm or a loud dining hall, you almost always have to buy something. Coffee shops have become de facto offices where you feel a wave of guilt for sitting at a table without a five dollar latte in front of you. Malls are dying or becoming too expensive to just wander around in. Parks are great until the weather turns or the sun goes down.
We are living in a time where “third spaces” are disappearing fast. These are the spots that are not home and are not school but are still essential for a community to breathe. In the past, these were the town squares, the local diners, or even the basement of a community center. For our generation, these spaces have been replaced by commercial zones where your presence is only tolerated as long as your credit card is active. When every social interaction requires a financial transaction, the nature of our friendships starts to change.
Without these neutral grounds, we end up retreating into our digital lives. It is much easier to hop on a Discord server or a group chat because it is free and the air conditioning is always on. But digital spaces are not a perfect replacement for physical ones. You cannot accidentally run into a new friend on a private server. You don’t get the same sense of belonging to a physical neighborhood when you are just staring at a screen. We are becoming more “connected” globally but much more isolated locally.
We need places where we can loiter without a receipt. Community cannot grow if it is always behind a paywall. Universities are some of the last places where these spaces still exist in the form of student unions or quad areas, but even those are starting to feel more like high-end food courts. We should be fighting to protect and create spaces that prioritize human connection over profit. A healthy society needs places where people can gather, talk, and exist for free.
Alex Lee
