The Lonely Office Is Bad for America - WSJ Opinion

People starting out need offices to learn a profession, to make friends, meet colleagues, find romantic partners and mates. The #MeToo movement did a lot to damage mentoring—senior employees no longer wanted to take the chance—but the end of office life would pretty much do away with it.

Ending office life severs one more mooring to reality. People become more insulated in their own echo chamber and isolated from a diversity of thought and ideas.

The unhealthiest aspect of the pandemic was how it drove us apart. We became afraid of each other, trapped in our social bubbles. That isolation led to the spike in irrational behavior and decline in mental health.

We don’t need to have hour long commutes to spend our days with horrible bosses, but we’re social beings. We are meant to be together. We need to see, think, and feel like our work matters, that we’re part of a group of people making the lives of others better.