Home alone: Remote work, isolation, and mental health

rootusrootus

I feel blessed to have been married throughout the entire Covid experience and since. I tried remote work a couple times when I was in my 20s, and it was awful. It took a surprisingly short amount of time before I was going a bit nuts. Talking to myself a lot, making noise just to make noise, etc. Turns out I need the interaction. Covid was a breeze because my wife works from home and I have two kids. So I'm not lacking for someone to interact with. And lest I fall into the trap of thinking that it's also because I'm just past 50 now, I occasionally get proof that I'd be just as screwed today. Like the last couple days -- my wife went on a trip for a few days, and my kids are in high school, so I have had the entire work day to myself. If it were all meetings, I'd probably be okay. But Thursday and Friday were both quiet, no meetings, just getting stuff done. And I found myself whistling, singing, making noise, and getting a little punchy by the end of the day when the kids came home. Some people just aren't cut out to be isolated. People might accuse me of seeming like a loner, and I kind-of-sort-of am in a way, but I do need social interaction pretty regularly.

ajkjk

> After the pandemic, workers in remote-capable jobs spent more time working alone and avoided social activities with their friends, remaining more isolated both during and after work. This pattern was most pronounced among remote workers living alone: They spent entire days without human contact and their mental distress, use of mental healthcare, and antidepressants increased acutely. One of those results which is exactly what anyone paying attention would predict. I'm glad there's hard evidence.

light_hue_1

This is a shamefully bad paper hyped up to make Science relevant but with a result that has no relationship at all to what's even in the title, never mind abstract. The sad part is, this is going to be used to hurt workers everywhere! Come back to work for your own mental health. They don't compare remote vs non-remote workers. They compare workers in job families that could be remote vs workers in job families that are unlikely to be remote. Their control group is nonsense, the pandemic affected people in different job families very differently. The real effect is living alone or not. Also, it conflates mental health utilization with mental health status. It makes it seem like not taking antidepressants means you aren't depressed. Maybe the actual lesson is that people in remote-capable jobs have better insurance and time to get antidepressants. And those that aren't, get to suffer with their bad mental health. This paper says absolutely nothing about the impact of remote work on workers. Zero.

FabCH

„Our results suggest that remote work substantially increases isolation and worsens mental health, particularly for those living alone.“ I absolutely hate bad science like this. No, your results suggest that remote work IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN THE 2020s substantially… The USA is a famously lonely country already and it is incredibly car-oriented culture. And it wasn’t always like this and it might not always be like this. Those are obvious confounding factors that should not be ignored and the fact that the reviewers for such a high profile publication let the authors write a conclusion that doesn’t mention the huge risk to validity is extremely annoying.

beezlewax

Gibberish paper

j45

Working remotely or in an office requires a routine that includes having other interests and hobbies scheduled and on the calendar.

ubertaco

This reminds me of growing up as a homeschooled kid and hearing people ask my parents "but how will they socialize?", generally while we were at the youth soccer field or at the playground or somewhere else that the irony should have caught their attention. Homeschooled kids can be isolated more because they don't have the forcing function of mandatory group settings, but often there are other opportunities available for socialization beyond just the one normally-compulsory (and, often miserable) environment. Similarly, remote work for the last near-decade for me has given me a lot more time to be engaged socially with my family and other local communities – time that used to be entirely lost to a long commute. My mental health is drastically better than when I was working in-office, largely because I don't have over an hour of traffic each way to deal with, and especially because I get to be engaged with my family more and be much closer and more involved with my kid than I would otherwise.

gxs

It’s hard for me not to be cynical When the city of San Francisco is handing out tax breaks to companies for forcing RTO in shitty Bay Area infrastructure and Paul Graham loudly and proudly calls wfh communism, it’s hard to not take these findings with a grain of salt Even if true, I am positive the solution isn’t to stuff people back into offices and rob them of the little leverage they got during covid

chjail-11

As non-neuro-typical I cherish the benefit of being able to work from home since 2010. No dress-code, commuting, open space offices, exhausting small-talk or social masking required. Love it.

ChrisMarshallNY

I think that it's pretty difficult to do an empirical study, here. The culture makes a big difference. I feel as if Americans can do remote "better" than other cultures, where constant human interaction is common. We already have a fairly isolated culture. That's not necessarily a good thing, though. It could be, that the increased isolation of remote is a "tipping point" kind of thing. In the US, it already happens to retired people; especially men (my age). I know, for myself, that I'm fortunate as hell to participate in an organization that forces me to interact, fairly intimately, with others, on an almost daily basis. All that said, there's also strong interests, that want the results to skew one way or another, and we already know that most research needs to be looked at, with a jaundiced eye (not new -people have been throwing research for decades).

budududuroiu

Haven't been in an office since the start of COVID. Between being lucky enough to have a great coliving setup with dope housemates, and now having access to co-working cafes in Taipei that have genuine communities, I feel more social than ever with more meaningful connections. I still commute to the cafes, for me remote working is about not having to be tied to a geographic spot in order to keep my source of income, not isolating at home.

gbraad

This is also why having a good manager is key; I worked as an engineering manager and kept a near weekly 1-1 with my engineers, not per se to socialize, but to allow them to ask questions about the tasks, implementation comments, etc. but the environment I created allowed them to talk other stuff. All my associates appreciated this mix of technical talk, but also fun discussions, etc. I am sure it help them to stay a bit more involved and sane. You can check recommendations on LinkedIn for confirmation ;-), but my whole team was remote.

pirategurt

working remote was amazing while I lived in a city with my friends/family. it was not so amazing for me once I moved to a new city with my gf where I did not know anyone else.

bethekidyouwant

Science dot org at it again.

Devasta

Oh yeah, my mental health is only improved by sitting in commuter traffic.

tamimio

Yeah, remote work is good, many factors need to be there for it to be great, otherwise, it becomes mentally exhausting. The line between work and personal life blurs, it’s great if you have family but also not great because sometimes it distracts you or add more responsibilities on you, the isolation is something to consider too, I had an interview with a company before where they required to do the work exclusively in your house (so can’t do cafe library etc), obviously bad. There’s also the boss/family/society view that remote work isn’t “real work” and you are slacking all day, so you have your company adding more measures to track you, you boss throwing more work at you, your family are asking you other tasks to do since you are home already! I found the best combo is having an office to go to, but close so commute isn’t an issue, and you go few times a week with flexible schedules.

small_model

But if I want to be social why does it have to be people I didnt choose (i.e. co workers). Why can I WFH and socialise with my family/friends who I choose to be with. This is basically nothing to do with remote work and more about isolation.

tchalla

> Our results suggest that remote work substantially increases isolation and worsens mental health, particularly for those living alone. Another angle - people don't know how to deal with isolation if not their work. Remote work has accelerated an aspect that we already knew existed. Social systems are tied ONLY around work which is not healthy.

rr808

My office has a big grad program so there are hundreds of interns and people under 25 in the office. Is really fun for them, I think its a real benefit that people look for now.

notepad0x90

anecdotal evidence doesn't mean much here, but it's been night and day for me. yes, much much more isolated but my mental health is 100x better. Even my phsyical health has improved in many ways, i'm eating better, resting more, getting medical checkups, etc... I can't overstate how amazing it has been for me. The only dread is the few times I do have to work in the office!! Every degradation in health (physical) I've had, I can trace it to a day at the office. I didn't know it was affecting me so badly, because back in the day, what else was the alternative? a bad day at work was the cause of so much, even things like starting drinking again, smoking again, not getting enough sleep, actual chronic disease,etc... And guess what else, I don't spend so much of my time wearing myself out commuting, but at the same time I am now interacting with more people (although not as much) on average than before. WFH seems like a "new" thing humans are doing, and now shoddy science like this is trying to confirmation-bias their way into pleasing their benefactors. however, consider how rural people lived historically. Not a whole lot of "commuting" to the farm. You don't interact with people outside of your household unless you went to market in the nearby town. Working indoors and being sedentary is new, but not working from home (think: farm, tradesman's shop at their house, etc..). What is extremely unnatural is clobbering random people in an "open area" "office". even in as recently as the 90s, when you worked from the office, you had an actual office to work out of!! Not being able to filter interactions, and spending so much of your time commuting and recovering from tiring IRL interactions and a day at the office that you make no friends or associations outside of work: that's what has already caused the loneliness epidemic before covid or wfh became a thing. These ghouls revel in that, it stokes their ego to see underling looking busy. I swear, there has to be some sort of reckoning coming, things can't be sustained with this sort of prevalent malice by those in power (this minor topic is just one straw on the camel's back). Coerced association and socialization is worse than loneliness. People literally kill themselves because of workplace bullying. Those bullies really don't like it when you're not there in person to manipulate and torment. I would REALLY love it if there was a study on this instead, why are so many people angels WFH but demons in person? is it "monkey brain" mechanics and instincts kicking in that don't when you're remote?