Home alone: Remote work, isolation, and mental health

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec7671

by speckx • 2 months ago

200 205 2 months ago

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.

Waterluvian• 2 months ago

Yeah. My wife doesn’t work and I have worked from home since pre-COVID. We had a 1 and 2 year old during covid and it was ridiculously convenient in many ways. Very lucky timing for us.

One thing I love about WFH is that I have more time to be friends with people I want to be friends with on my terms. Work colleagues can remain colleagues.

Some people will have different struggles and deal with it differently, for sure. It’s probably not for everyone. It’s definitely for some people.

ajkjk3• 2 months ago

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.

28304283409234• 2 months ago

I'm sure this is true. Also true is the mental distress I experience having to work in an crazy noisy open office space. Give me an actual office, and I'll go there.

dyauspitr• 2 months ago

An actual office is not even that expensive. All they have to do is double the height of the cubicle walls and slap a door on there but they won’t do it.

notepad0x903• 2 months ago

this is flawed in a way, they're presupposing social contact is always positive or healthy? It is biased because it isn't looking at the mental health state of individuals prior to remote work, as well as post RTO.

ZpJuUuNaQ5• 2 months ago

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.

I guess there is a cultural component to it too, or maybe I'm just that much disconnected from humanity. It's just hard for me to imagine that spending time alone would, in general, affect someone so much that they would begin to rely on drugs and other means of mental care. Maybe it has little to do with isolation in particular and the source of distress is simply the abrupt change in lifestyle. For example, forcing a person to socialize every day when they aren't used to it would put them in a similar state. I've lived alone for over a decade (since I was 19), and by far the biggest source of mental distress to me are interactions with people. I have never seen a psychologist in my life nor ever taken any mind-altering drugs. Remote work came and, thankfully, hasn't fully left, but I barely even remember the pandemic. Of course, it's just a personal experience, not a generalization.

shmel• 2 months ago

It's certainly personal. I live alone for the last 11 years and I remember the pandemic as the worst period of my life exactly because I couldn't interact with people. Surely moving to another city just before played a role, but I realized that one week stuck at home was enough to drive me completely insane. While going to office doesn't replace normal social life, it's still something that helped me before. After the pandemic I kept WFH, but found a relatively big and diverse friend circle. Now I treat social life as something mandatory like food and sleep because I learned that even "going out" alone (grab a dinner somewhere and go to a cinema or something like that) barely helps when I need to connect with someone and have a meaningful conversation. And yet, some of my friends are exactly like you, they barely noticed the pandemic and were perfectly happy to stay at home and tinker with their side projects.

SoftTalker3• 2 months ago

IDK I quite enjoy being home alone with no human contact. Interacting with other people is so tiring, and there's not much reward in it for me. Being with other people is stressful.

ajkjk3• 2 months ago

What I feel like cannot be missed if you're paying attention is that other people suffer from it. Whether individual mind it or not doesn't disprove the general observation.

light_hue_1• 2 months ago

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.

Insanity2• 2 months ago

Yeah. Compare mental health of those with families in remote vs non-remote work and it might flip entirely.

It is valuable though to point out that loneliness is a real issue and remote work could exacerbate that.

For my part, being forced to sit in an open office with chatter all around me is much worse for my mental health than the peace and quiet of my own home.

XorNot2• 2 months ago

I think trying to solve loneliness by combining it with the modern corporate environment is absolutely the wrong approach though.

Get your socialization needs met in an environment where we ask all the people around you to rate your performance and determine whether your salary should continue to be paid.

gobdovan• 2 months ago

They spent entire days without human contact and their mental distress, use of mental healthcare, and antidepressants increased acutely

You simply can't end an abstract/"editor's summary" with this kind of phrase when your whole field for decades has claimed seeking care and treatment is encouraged and should be viewed as positive. Although I understand they're used as proxy measurements, I can't take seriously a publication so careless in how it expresses itself.

antonvs2• 2 months ago

There's a reason people look at the institutions that a study comes from. In this case it's:

* Federal Reserve Bank of New York

* Department of Economics, University of Virginia

* Department of Economics, Harvard University

They're not doing anything to help the reputation of economics and economists.

FabCH• 2 months ago

„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.

notepad0x903• 2 months ago

This is one reason it's hard to trust science, they start of with a bias and confirm it, but make it look like it was objective. You'd need decades of research to even come near a conclusion on something like this. "suggests" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there, but the general public, policy makers, executives, hr, etc.. will read "it's a fact", and I suspect whoever funded this knew exactly what they're doing.

beezlewax• 2 months ago

Gibberish paper

j453• 2 months ago

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

reg_dunlop3• 2 months ago

All things being equal, if a person works remotely, apparently they're more likely to trend reclusive.

At the same time, a person working in an office has the illusion of social activity.

Just because a person works in an office doesn't mean they're more well adjusted socially, or more active.

Just because a person works remotely doesn't mean they're a recluse.

Life requires effort and being engaged. Though as a remote worker myself, I do appreciate the tendency to not make an effort. However, when I do make an effort, the effort is easier and the reward greater than social activities that'd be available during an office job.

ubertaco3• 2 months ago

All things being equal, if a person works remotely, apparently they're more likely to trend reclusive.

The existence of families and housemates reveals this to be a false dichotomy: either you're spending in-office time with coworkers or you don't like being around any people, seems to be the claim.

sublinear• 2 months ago

illusion of social activity

This is so spot on.

I would like to see stats for introverts who do not have mental health issues. Those living alone and working from home probably have the best outcomes across the board.

j453• 1 month ago

Healthy solitude is a gift for reflection.

To an extreme, reclusion rids one of the input from living life around.

Need input and reflection to be an upward spiral, otherwise input without reflection, or reflection without new input trends towards putting a person into a downward spiral.

poszlem• 2 months ago

Interestingly, when times were good, companies did everything in their power to pull employees' hobbies, interests, and social lives into the workplace. Hence the huge "campuses" and all the rest. Now, suddenly, everyone is surprised that people have no life outside of work.

This may turn out to be a huge wake-up call, perhaps even for the best. People may start going back to a proper 9-to-5, closing their laptops at the end of the day and actually living their lives. Let's hope that the next time the market goes crazy, we remember these lessons - though I'm very doubtful.

bonoboTP3• 2 months ago

There will always be people who are willing to put in the time and grind a few years in their 20s to achieve a better life for themselves and their future family, even if you would prioritize other things. It's ge theory and you don't have power over them in such laptop jobs. Your best available tool is to shame them and make striving and overtime be shunned. Many cultures have this, it's like tall poppy syndrome, but more general. But in individualistic cultures like the US, they won't care about your opinion. They are on a path whether you like it or not. If you want to have Germany-level work-life balance, you'll have to make do with Germany-level salaries, but I assume you sill want US style 6 figures just with 9-to-5...

ubertaco3• 2 months ago

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.

watwut6• 2 months ago

Homeschooled people just assume others must be unhappy in those places where they dont go, but that is not the case and not shown in statistics.

Also, those people asking the question you find weird were asking about the experiences and kind of socialization that they consider big deal and was not going on in that place.

card_zero• 2 months ago

Prison?

bentley• 2 months ago

As someone who was public schooled six years and homeschooled six years, public school definitely made me more unhappy, and was worse for me socially.

Of course, I wouldn’t assume everyone in my shoes would have the same experience. But it definitely cemented my positive opinion about homeschooling generally.

good8675309• 2 months ago

There’s a lot of assumption in that statement. I was never homeschooled but I hated public school so much that I decided to homeschool all 4 of my kids. They love the freedom and they are honestly over socialized

ubertaco3• 1 month ago

Homeschooled people just assume others must be unhappy in those places where they dont go, but that is not the case and not shown in statistics.

I hear you. I grew up in the "homeschool evangelical separatist" bubble, where sending your kids to public school was seen as a sin. I know I still have some unconscious biases left over from that that I'm still working out, and having never been in the public school system myself, I can't speak from any experience there.

I mostly speak from the hearsay of friends/family who did go to public school, some of whom did both models and were generally unhappier (bullied, left unhelped by overburdened teachers) than when they were homeschooled.

My point was not that the unhappiness is a universal experience, but rather than the mandatory nature of repeatedly returning to the same place for school makes unhappiness, when present, inescapable. Thus, yes, there's socialization happening in those cases, but it's negative, and it's inescapable without major changes (like changing schools, which for many requires moving, given the high cost of private school).

Also, those people asking the question you find weird were asking about the experiences and kind of socialization that they consider big deal and was not going on in that place.

This is the part where I think you're trying to speak to my experience from a place of assuming you have more knowledge about my life than I do. I know the conversations that happened with us as kids and with our parents. The assumption was that if you weren't around other kids in school, specifically, that you were missing something important that these other adults described as "socialization", but often couldn't actually define beyond just using that term without a good understanding of what it means.

As another commenter points out, "socialization" is different from "socializing"; it's an actual sociological "shaping" process (like how some environments can socialize children towards learning that you shouldn't steal, while other environments can socialize children towards learning that they should do whatever it takes to get ahead, including stealing). Socialization is a process, not a goal; it's how community norms and standards are instilled through both negative and positive reinforcement, but those community norms and standards (like "the biggest kid on the playground gets their way through threats", as in one family member's case) can be negative.

The adults asking these questions, when asked what they meant, could never articulate what they were afraid we wouldn't be socialized towards. Just that we "wouldn't be around other kids", which both wasn't a direction of socialization (but was instead a means of socialization) and was demonstrably untrue by the fact that these questions were being asked at soccer practice, at the playground, at the local YMCA, etc.

fdgfikgfv• 2 months ago

I wasn’t homeschooled but I have been working from home for good part of last two decades. And I have not felt any negative effects of it.

In fact, it forced me to go out seek friends in local communities like meetups and various clubs. I have a feeling that people who feel isolated due to WFH would be same people who don’t interact with anyone in the offices as well.

em-bee3• 2 months ago

I have a feeling that people who feel isolated due to WFH would be same people who don’t interact with anyone in the offices as well

i am experiencing this from a different angle. i am shy in certain situations so i don't easily socialize. what helps me is forced/formalized socialization, like pair programming. forced in the sense that i don't have to ask someone to make it happen. (although asking gets easier as i get older)

so what makes me feel isolated is working alone on a task. the fact that there are dozens of other people around me doesn't help much if i can't talk to them all day unless i need help.

working from home doesn't make things much worse. but, it allows me to avoid social isolation through other means. the advantage of going out to seek friends is that you can choose where to go, and you can go to places that are more open to interaction than the people at work. still i would prefer work where i have to cooperate with others, and not just work on my tasks alone.

aatd86• 2 months ago

I think people who want you on site are lying because commuting and forced promiscuity and the lack of comfort is way worse.

But commercial real estate takes a hit and it is not good for investors. They should lead with this instead...

xg154• 2 months ago

The question is whether you are the norm or the exception. Others may not have that social structure outside the job available or may not be motivated to use it (the "forcing function" of the office being removed)

vimbtw• 2 months ago

Exactly, WFH and home schooling both require you to proactively seek out relationships. A lot of people haven’t developed this habit/skill, and without school or work to provide social time they don’t really develop relationships. Losing that “forcing function” means ripping off the bandaid of how few real relationships they actually have.

There have personally been times in my life where I’ve lost that bandaid (workplace, academic extracurricular activity, etc.) and thankfully I’ve usually been able to respond by realizing that I had a problem and proactively doing something about it.

graemep• 2 months ago

IMO home education is usually better for social development because you typically meet a greater variety of people in different settings. I think its more likely to be a problem for some adults. Remote work can be bad for a large group of people. If you live alone and do not have existing local communities you will have to make an effort. How easy that is depends on where you live.

Remote work (especially as I have been self employed) has definitely allowed me to spend more time with my children (and allowed me to home educate them!) but they are grown up (the younger one will start university this year), I have divorced and moved house so i do not automatically have the family and social network you have. It does not mean I am isolated, but it does mean its not automatic. I can imagine many people do slip into isolation.

Socially, there might be a benefit to local communities from more people engaging. AT long last a replacement for the role stay at home mum used to play in many communities?

gxs2• 2 months ago

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

antonvs2• 2 months ago

Paul Graham loudly and proudly calls wfh communism

I missed that. Deets?

gxs2• 2 months ago

He tweeted this a while ago

chjail-11• 2 months ago

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.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 2 months ago

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).

throwaway20374• 2 months ago

    > I'm fortunate as hell to participate in an organization that forces me to interact, fairly intimately, with others, on an almost daily basis.

Sounds cool. What org?

ChrisMarshallNY2• 2 months ago

Won’t mention it explicitly (them’s the rules), but it’s a program of personal Recovery.

Been at it for over 45 years.

budududuroiu• 2 months ago

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.

stringfood5• 2 months ago

The worst thing about office friends is they immediatley cease to be friends when you are laid off or change jobs, only maybe 2% do I actually stay in contact with, and frankly that is just because of the nostalgia I have of working with them and the networking benefits. Work friends are not friends. People you meet near your home and at your book club are more likely to stick around through the thick and thin. That being said yes being in office can benefit some people's mental health

Cyclone_4• 2 months ago

You probably just never got to know them that well and did things outside of work with them. I've met people at the office and stayed in touch with them and hung out after they left or I left the company.

tpmoney4• 2 months ago

Work friends are not friends.

This is reductive to the point of absurdity. Situational friends are still friends. How many of your elementary school friends are still your friends these days? High school? Summer camp? Heck college friends? Unless you're living in the same town with the same people, there's a good chance that most of them aren't anymore. Were these people also not your friends? When you leave that book club, when you stop showing up at the corner cafe, when you move out of the neighborhood, how many of those people will you still be spending time with 5 years later. For the ones that you aren't, were they also not really friends?

Friendship isn't a binary thing. Not every friend you make will help you bury a body, but not every friend or friendship needs to (or should) run that deep. And sure not everyone you're "friendly" with at work are friends, it's a spectrum. But situational friends are friends. People you bond with for a short while over a shared experience and then when life moves one or both of you on the friendship ends are still friends.

throw-the-towel3• 2 months ago

Genuine question: why do you expect them to stay your best friends forever? Is just seeing other humans not valuable enough? Your POV strikes me as very all-or-nothing.

s1artibartfast• 2 months ago

Meh, about half my close friends are former coworkers.

Some even married coworkers. New jobs but still married

nextos2• 2 months ago

True, there's also another factor about not having to be tied to a geographic spot, housing costs.

In EU, even relatively good IT salaries are mediocre when you factor in monthly rental. A simple one-bed apartment can easily take 50% of your net income.

Having freedom to move, even within a particular country, allows reducing that 50% to something more sustainable.

throwaway20374• 2 months ago

It never ends on HN, does it? These wild claims about "[i]n EU". I puke each time I see that phrase. The EU is enormous. There is no way that a "simple one-bed apartment can easily take 50% of your net income" in any mid-sized EU city, or an hour outside a large EU city.

xg154• 2 months ago

This is actually how I understood the "remote work" movement before covid: Not literally "work from home" but "work where it works best for you", e.g. in coworking spaces.

Covid was an exception because it made "work from home" literal, as the isolation was the point.

Of course even in normal times, coworking spaces cost money and have to be available, so you might now have a situation where workers now have to pay extra to not be isolated. And not everyone can do or wants to do that.

gbraad7• 2 months ago

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.

Jcampuzano2• 2 months ago

Maybe my managers have always sucked or I'm terrible at sharing info or not very chatty with people at work but I've personally always found weekly 1-1's to end up being fairly useless.

May just be a person by person thing though, not saying what you have is bad per say.

Very rarely did anything actually get discussed of any meaning. Ive always found them to end up just being another annoying meeting in my calendar.

mschulkind• 2 months ago

I've found what works best here is just switching to every 2 weeks or every 4 weeks. If you have little to talk about in a 1:1, feel free to end early, and then double the length of time until the next one.

gbraad7• 2 months ago

If the engineer didn't want, I never forced them. I made them meaningful. Even had an engineer ask me to continue with them after he changed to another manager.

And no, not all conversations were easy. The hardest for me was with my associates in an active warzone.

I often heard associates complain that their previous manager didn't have effective talk; mostly just asked "how was your weekend". Associates care you understand them, if they have difficulty with the monetary discussion you help them with this too, etc. for me, their growth helps building the team, and the overall well being influences that!

tayo423• 2 months ago

I think almost all of my managers sucked and probably most in the world do. There's no real training, MBAs have their reputation for a reason or they're engineers promoted and maybe have a random close by mentor at best. The position is filled with career climbers. Career climbing doesn't priotize employees best interests.

SoftTalker3• 2 months ago

Agree. they've always been meaningless ceremony in my experience.

renjimen4• 2 months ago

I do this with my team. We spend more than half of our weekly 30 minute 1-on-1s talking about anything but work. That isn't written down anywhere, it's just a natural consequence of us being interested in each others' lives, and prioritizing that over "getting back" 20 minutes to do more work.

We also have a team-wide monthly "happy hour" where we bring one discussion point each, usually an interesting article. They're a lot of fun, and I appreciate my colleagues in a much more rich way than I would have otherwise.

It's so obviously important that we maintain semblance of community through live conversation in remote workplaces. I spend more time "with" my remote colleagues than I do with anyone else in my life, including my wife. The human brain does not separate cleanly into "colleagues" and "friends".

gbraad7• 2 months ago

The risk I often see is when the company also emphasizes this 'family' ideal. I think that is unnatural and forced; most of my associates hated this. It ruins the work-life balance.

I found it more important to emphasize trust, and allow them to handle these conversations/attendance If they couldn't, that's fine. Outside factors can disrupt this, ... So I wouldn't complain if there was a no show once in a while.

We had a monthly tea(m)time to share tea and talk about anything, hobby topic or something technical. It was fun to see what people do with 3d printers, especially those that had no time/space for this.

SoftTalker3• 2 months ago

I've had 1:1s like this and I'll tell you it was entirely performative. Yes my manager and I chatted about non work stuff for half or even all of the meeting but it was all fake, just talk to get through the meeting.

jghn• 2 months ago

What if they don’t want to spend their time making small talk with their boss or manufactured chit chat at a happy hour?

I get that a lot of people need this. I don’t need my work to provide a social life, I’d rather get my shit done and leave. When I socialize in a work capacity I’m doing it because it helps me do my job better, not because I want to

zelphirkalt• 2 months ago

I had 1on1s every 2 weeks and it was always annoying. Partially, because I didn't feel like "opening up" to this team lead and didn't feel like he was on my side or had my back at all. In the end I should be proven right, due to something he did when I left the company and also right before I left, which was one of the reasons I left. Turned out my gut feeling was right, to distrust this guy. He probably just went through the motions of what he had read somewhere of how to be a team lead, instead of really being in it.

wonderwonder3• 2 months ago

I work remotely, my manager for the last 4 years had a 1:1 on the books every Friday. We met a total of 7 times, 4 of those were to give me my annual review and tell me my bonus.

pirategurt• 2 months ago

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.

makeitdouble• 2 months ago

Does your neighborhood have community meetings and operations ? (cleaning ? helping elderlies ? preparing for festivities ?)

Do you have a hobby ? Would you do volunteer work ?

Not knowing people is a solvable problem. Whether you like these people is another one, but that comes down to where you chose to live, not remote work or not.

bethekidyouwant• 2 months ago

Science dot org at it again.

Devasta• 2 months ago

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

tamimio• 2 months ago

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_model6• 2 months ago

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.

oytis2• 2 months ago

I mean, it's right there in the abstract. The study showed that people working remotely were more isolated outside of work too.

Personally I enjoy working remotely and value time spent alone, but the data looks interesting

small_model6• 2 months ago

Why is more isolation negative, should be a spectrum, 98% alone and the rest socialising.

aok14252• 2 months ago

The abstract of the article says that folks who have remote work are more socially isolated, even after work hours.

Maybe WFH allows folks to be more social with the people they want, but the abstract says that they socialise less overall, and are more socially isolated.

small_model6• 2 months ago

Most people live with a spouse , kids, room mates though, I live with my family and they are generally around so get plenty of company (too much sometimes). This is about living alone AND WFH, then yes might be good to go to the office.

JackFr• 2 months ago

Socializing != socialization.

The first is enjoying the company of friends, while the second is a sociological process of internalizing cultural norms and appropriate behavior. How to behave in a group, how to approach a stranger, how to respond to someone who irritates you, etc.

obscurette• 2 months ago

Being forced to interact with people you haven't chosen to socialize is good for your mental health and for society. People interacting with different people are less afraid of the world, more trusting etc. Clustering into echochambers is bad for society as a whole.

small_model6• 2 months ago

Not sure about this, most people would rather interact with people the like, click with than some boomer manager who thinks it's still 1950 IBM days.

zimpenfish2• 2 months ago

Being forced to interact with people you haven't chosen to socialize is good for your mental health and for society.

That may well be true for some extroverted people, yes; it is 100% absolutely not true for "all people". You force me to interact with people I haven't chosen and there's a reasonably high probability that I'll subsequently choose to never interact with you again.[0]

People interacting with different people are less afraid of the world, more trusting etc.

My childhood was largely interaction with people I didn't choose[1] and, nope, I am absolutely not "more trusting" as a result.

Clustering into echochambers is bad for society as a whole.

Citation needed for that one.

[0] There is a slim chance that the people I haven't chosen to interact with turn out to be reasonable decent people who I don't annoy and, more importantly, don't annoy me.

[1] A bunch of enforced house moves and a paucity of decent locals at each new house/school.

tayo423• 2 months ago

Work is a fake environment where your communication is policed and you need to read books about how to effectively communicate to influence people do the things you want. Normals socialization isn't like that.

tensor• 2 months ago

I don't think it has anything to do with echo chambers. It's simply that weak tie relationships are different than close ties, and very valuable. This narrative that we somehow are required to interact with people who are "very different" (often it actually means "offensive to us") is something that seems to be pushed by the US alt-right very hard. I call BS on it.

xg154• 2 months ago

No one is stopping you. The question is how easy it is to do that vs staying lonely.

I think the problem is that "being social with" some group isn't always as easy as it seems. Work and family are sort of two "default" groups that you automatically have access to (even if those groups may not always be fitting or rewarding).

For other social groups, you have to invest effort yourself, and that effort can be a lot: Finding communities in the first place, making contact, staying engaged, being socially fluent enough that others want to keep contact, etc etc.

That's a lot of work and also requires some skill (and even luck sometimes). Not everyone may be willing or able to put in that work.

(Specifically for work environments, I wonder if the "shared misery" aspect might also play a role: In a work environment, everyone knows that you're not here for fun - paradoxically, that might make some social interactions easier, because you can stop interacting without sending a negative message. In contrast, in voluntary activities, this is harder, because the basic expectation is that you want to be there. So talking about interactions that didn't work well socially might be harder.)

tchalla2• 2 months ago

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.

gbraad7• 2 months ago

In most cultures "what do you do" is the first question that people ask, but answered with their job position in most Western countries.

In most other places, people will respond with their current activity, or their hobby or even religion or believe.

A lot of our culture revolves around work giving us meaning and satisfaction. And this is very obvious now due to recent layoffs and how people are affected in feeling/prospect because of this.

joe_mamba4• 2 months ago

In most cultures "what do you do" is the first question that people will answer with their job position in most Western countries.

No, it's the opposite, in most places in the world, average people typically respond with their profession just as they always had in every coultre on the planet, from India to Bulgaria to North America from 2000 BC to 2026 AD. Are you a blacksmith, are you a priest, are you a teacher, are you a construction worker etc. In Europe many people's family names are literally the profession of their ancestors.

In most other places, people will respond with their current activity, or their hobby or even religion or believe.

Again, the opposite, People identifying with their "current hobby" are typically snobby western white collar hippies, who now think their identity transcended beyond their profession due to the privileges of the wealth of their profession, and the social pressures of their politically correct society that views certain professions that generate wealth (like tech bros) with a certain stigma that might be a negative to society, so they they shy away from it and choose another identity not related to their profession.

prmoustache3• 2 months ago

but answered with their job position in most Western countries.

I think that is mostly a US thing.

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WabD6tGz-Dc

fnordpiglet• 2 months ago

The people paid to be there aren’t your friends. They’re nominally “coworkers,” which is not a social relationship but a transactional one. The fact we’ve as a society replaced human social interaction with people acting a work persona for money is more sad than being lonely - this should be the state that is considered lonely.

Being isolated in the way discussed is in my mind a process of reclamation to normal social relationships. At first it’s disorienting and hard. Over time; you adjust.

fra• 2 months ago

My experience could not be more different. I’ve made life long friends at work, especially when I was working for smaller firms. I don’t think those relationships are transactional.

tpmoney4• 2 months ago

The people paid to be there aren’t your friends. They’re nominally “coworkers,” which is not a social relationship but a transactional one.

You're getting paid to be friends with your co-workers? Or are you being paid to work, and work, like many other situations where multiple people gather and share experiences and spend time together are also places that people tend to form friendships in. You had friends in school that you stopped maintaining the friendship when you stopped attending school together I'm sure. Were those people not actually your friends? How long does a "social interaction" have to last, and over what distances before it becomes a "friendship" instead of a "transactional relationship"? If it ever ends was it never a real friendship? It's certainly possible to view every relationship you build with people that you share circumstances with as transactional relationships, but that to me seems like a good way to never actually build a friendship with anyone.

wqaatwt5• 1 month ago

replaced human social interaction

That was always the case historically. Outside of family people mainly interacted and formed social the mainly with the people they worked with. There is nothing modern about that if anything we have more opportunities to met new people outside of your close these days.

One thing is less stability, people tend to form less life long bonds when they change jobs ever few years instead of working with the same people for 20-30 years

people paid to be there aren’t your friends

Well children are forced to attend school, does that make you can’t make any friends there? Its not that different..

biql• 2 months ago

The difference is in office work it happens by inertia whereas socializing outside requires practicing agency.

Morromist• 2 months ago

Yeah, although I suspect the study isn't taking account major economic factors involving ai and remote work jobs - the fact is society is built around jobs you commute to and it takes a little bit of time for society to change.

People have understood suburbs are designed for commuters since they first started popping up, this isn't like some bizarre thing that needs careful understanding. It would be like if people stopped using boats, everyone in Venice would be like "people who once used boats are now having trouble getting around town and the streets are too crowded. How curious."

prmoustache3• 2 months ago

This. I have seen people afraid of retiring because they didn't knew what to do next nor did they have hobbies and social life.

I have so many ideas I feel my problem would be to forget about somes.

chrisbrandow2• 2 months ago

Working alone at home is far more novel and unusual than any arrangement of work and socialization that has existed in the last 500 years

verve_rat• 2 months ago

Retired people have had to deal with this. I assume it is less of a problem in multi-generational homes.

watwut6• 2 months ago

Nuclear familly with one breadwinner was and is exactly that. Staying at home with a kid is more isolating then work from home (you dont have meetings).

tchalla2• 2 months ago

"Third places" have existed for 1000s of years. We have actively weakened them by replacing them with modern work in the last 30 years or so. Remote work exposes it even further. In office work, papers over the cracks. It doesn't solve the issue.

nottorp• 2 months ago

Social systems are tied ONLY around work which is not healthy.

That is the real problem. I've been working from home for most of my career, but I also have friends (some i made while working, some from other common interests) and we meet at least every weekend.

rr808• 2 months ago

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.

notepad0x903• 2 months ago

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?

ronbenton• 2 months ago

Very happy I had my wife and kids throughout the pandemic and continued remote work since then. I would not have done well otherwise.

hypfer• 2 months ago

For all the good this shift brought, I think a lot of people genuinely just aren't made for remote working.

This _can_ also happen in IT and tech, however I think it's more of an issue in all the non-IT spaces that _also_ went remote due to the pandemic.

IT tends to favor a specific cluster of brain wiring that is more likely to strive in such environments, which I think often skews our perspective on things.

Employee management is just hard. At least if you actually try that is.

If you just go with "lol RTO all the way" or "lol remote work all the way", you do not have much work at all. Just likely unhappy employees.

Hyperscaling (and scale in general) unfortunately sets incentives in ways that make good employee management less likely to happen. Oh well.

jleyank• 2 months ago

Introverts, two-professional family units and affordable housing are all favoured by working remote. Companies have a larger pool of talent to draw from, and probably can lower their salaries.

And they also permit people with kids to participate.

hunter-gatherer• 2 months ago

Yes. I also took a lower salary to continue a remote only position. I've had recruiters reach out to offer positions in places I don't want to go back to, and I always politely tell them that they'd have to pay me more than I'm worth to go back.

tianqi2• 2 months ago

I don't understand how the research methodology used in the article supports this conclusion. How did they rule out the possibility that the post-pandemic economic situation has had a greater impact on these jobs, leading to greater stress? How did they we rule out that remote work has led to greater range of outsourcing, resulting in more intense competition for these jobs, rather than that caused by the lack of social contact? Or is it simply because the rapid development of AI in the research period has had a greater impact on these jobs, which is an obvious possibility?

anukin• 2 months ago

This is a psychology paper. It’s difficult to attribute anything in psychology easily to a certain factor.

steve1977• 2 months ago

And often it also doesn't seem to be desired.

sharts• 2 months ago

Unless the research is going to get funded to the tune of billions, they likely had to cut some corners

Cyclone_4• 2 months ago

Billions? Where are you seeing a need for billions to do a study like that?

munificent• 2 months ago

How did they rule out the possibility that the post-pandemic economic situation has had a greater impact on these jobs, leading to greater stress?

I only skimmed the paper, but I presume it is comparing remote workers to non-remote workers who also have gone through the same post-pandemic economic situation.

tianqi2• 2 months ago

They use different industries to represent remote workers and non-remote workers. However the same economic situation can have very different effects on different industries.

devindotcom2• 2 months ago

From the paper:

Undoubtedly, there are potential alternative explanations for the differential deterioration in mental health among those in remotable jobs, such as the introduction of generative artificial intelligence (AI), political shifts, or lingering effects of the pandemic. Workers in AI-exposed occupations—which also tend to be more remotable—might plausibly show rising distress owing to job security concerns rather than remote work. To test this, we leveraged an AI occupational exposure index (21, 22). We found that the mental health effects load on remotability rather than AI exposure (table S20). Additionally, the time series changes in mental health coincide with the pandemic and not the rapid diffusion of AI following ChatGPT’s release in late 2022. Furthermore, we might expect the mental health effects of AI to be particularly large among those who recently lost their jobs, but instead we found more muted effects for the unemployed (fig. S5). Together, these findings suggest that remote work is a more plausible explanation for deteriorating mental health than generative AI during our study period.

not sure if that answers your question, but your question also seems kind of bad faith perfect v good rather than merits and rigor.

redrove• 2 months ago

I read the entire thing and it seems to me like they started with the conclusion and tried to find proof, like a lot of psychology papers.

Thoroughly unreliable.

proofofcontempt• 2 months ago

Although a large body of research finds that workers want to work remotely, our findings suggest that workers may not realize the costs of remote work for their well-being

Sentences like this just make my eyes roll. 'Workers' have agency to make judgement on what has a positive and what has a negative effect on their well being.

Personally not having to commute led to me being able to attend meetup groups in the evenings where I formed an amazing group of friends and met my current partner. It had such a massively positive impact on my well-being.

Mwntalhwalth3• 2 months ago

Wfh since long before covid (15 years) . It will 100% burn you out slowly while you think you are better and stronger than it. Feels good at the beginning likely b.c your current job is super toxic and your away from your boss but there are many factors largely due to isolation that will settle in.

To survive wfh you need to concentrate heavily on early morning sunlight, walks throughout the day, yoga, acupuncture, blue light glasses at night time, major attempts to get out and socialize outside of work, creating a safe place in your home for working so you don't mix them together, get out in nature, tend to a garden otherwise aka try really hard not to work after hours and offset the toxicity of wfh.

Cyclone_4• 2 months ago

I've felt the same way. At first it felt great to be able to get more done both at work and at home. But I did feel more isolated as time went on. The last in person place(with some hybrid) I was at had super toxic coworkers but the 2 places I've been at that are fully remote all had great ones. So it's a little disappointing now that they don't allow in person.

hdgvhicv• 2 months ago

WFH since 2011, I don’t recognise your statement at all.

Mwntalhwalth3• 2 months ago

Nothing is completely binary. I've studied stress and one of the other big factors to note is loss of control and what that can do to oneself. It's nice to be able to walk into someone's office and just settle something vs letting it cook and propogate among the many other intracscies from long term wfh. Greatly depends on if your running things I think, working with a team, the type of work you do etc

Stress compounds and hides. Our monkey brains are dumb with long term issues and can easily be masked by substances.

Care to share more on what's worked well for you?

wonderwonder3• 2 months ago

I’ve been isolated via work from home for so long I don’t even see people who aren’t my wife and kids as real anymore. When I interact with them it’s like they are just npc’s in a game. They vanish as soon as they are out of sight to preserve system resources. Wife will start talking to me about someone Ive met 5 times before and I have no idea who she’s talking about.

I literally don’t know anyone outside of my household and I’m completely fine with it. It’s just how things are now.

I have the gym and that’s enough

mh2266• 2 months ago

I have two extra hours per day to exercise, and… I can do it in the middle of the day when the gym and bike paths are mostly empty.

¯\(ツ)/¯ works for me!

throwaway20374• 2 months ago

    > blue light glasses at night time

And avoid seed oils, right?

Mwntalhwalth3• 2 months ago

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28548897/ I have no idea what you are talking about re seed oils I mentioned sleep in the context of eliminating melatonin disruption.

Slowly cooking yourself isn't obvious until it's obvious.

wonderwonder3• 2 months ago

I’ve worked remotely for about 8 years now. I currently have zero IRL friends and if not for my wife and kids I would go months without speaking to another person. For the last 4 years I didn’t even have standups, I could go weeks without speaking to anyone at work besides the occasional teams message. I have daily standups now and they are mentally exhausting.

The only time I leave the house is gym, to take the kids somewhere, grocery shopping or similar. I have forgotten how to even pretend to care when people speak to me, they are all npcs to me. I don’t remember anyone’s name. To be clear this is a personal flaw due to my isolation, not anything to do with them.

It’s been like this for so long that I have no desire to change, it’s simply the way things are now. When I take the kids to sports my wife asks if I interacted with the other parents and Im not sure why or even how I would do that.

I have the gym though which I love, headphones on, music up and grind, alone in the crowd.

smeej• 2 months ago

This seems like such a classic example of mixing up correlation and causation.

Who's more likely to choose a job that can be done from home? People who already have reasons they'd rather not go out and spend their entire day around other people. How do you control for all those reasons?

khalic• 2 months ago

Where’s the control group?

thi2• 2 months ago

I can understand that being isolated is a real issue. But if your only joy and socialization happens in a corporate office you still have a problem.

cladopa• 2 months ago

It is kind of ridiculous to link working from home to working alone, specially after the braindead strategy that was applied by politics on COVID, like forbidding going out in controlled groups, like you could do in Japan during COVID without problems.

Going out for a walk alone to the beach or the mountains was forbidden. It was so ridiculous. And of course I went out anyway and it was essential for my health and sanity.

I have been working from home for a long time. It gives me freedom. I don't have to waste hours moving most of the time, and time with friends and family that I choose.

When I worked in an office I had to spend one hour moving in and one moving out each day.

This study is equivalent to the drugs study done on caged rats. The caged rats being humans during pandemic.

It was discovered later that if you let the rats freedom and the ability to socialise they did not get as anxious as when caged and they did not look for drugs for escaping their miserable lives.

throw-the-towel3• 2 months ago

Wow, this comment section is a veritable gallery of "works on my machine^Wbrain".

albatross79• 2 months ago

Have they done a study on how being fake in the office all day and having to tolerate other people's narcissism affects one's mental health too?

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 2 months ago

I have been working from home for the last 20 years, that's the entirety of my work life.

Lack of social interaction has not been a problem, I either had them digitally and later on, my wife works from home with me.

No office, thanks.

sreekanth850• 2 months ago

Woeking from home is not easy. Went to depression and took medication for two years. Social isolation is a big thing.

devindotcom2• 2 months ago

ITT: the REAL scientists

0xbadcafebee• 2 months ago

Do I really have to say "correlation is not causation" ? A lot of things happened between 2022 and 2024 to make people depressed. Particularly in 2024.

those in remotable jobs spent an additional 1.1 waking hours alone relative to those in nonremotable jobs

Yeah, it's called commuting time, we don't have to do it when we're remote. That doesn't mean we need to go out and play football with that extra hour. We can also use it to relax.

Moreover, remotable workers experienced a 1.0 pp (72.2%) relative increase in the share of days with no human contact: no idle chitchat with a barista, no hello from a co-worker, no smile from a passerby at the grocery store

If you're in traffic for an hour a day, you're not getting smiles from people at the grocery store either. You are however probably very frustrated with the traffic or annoying people on the bus.

Mental distress rose precipitously for those who were in remotable jobs, for whom time alone ballooned. For those in nonremotable jobs, mental distress ticked up only marginally vis-à-vis preexisting trends

They're leading the witness by projecting that it's time alone that caused the additional mental distress (and no mention of other factors). They also completely skip over the fact that the remotable and non-remotable mental distress are now at parity. Everyone is miserable now, but apparently this is only noteworthy because we expect remote workers to be much happier? So, wait - remote work people were happier? And now they're not? They just proved it's not remote work at fault.

So I just asked Gemini to analyze the paper, and it found some big flaws:

- "We compared postpandemic changes in isolation and mental health for workers in jobs amenable to remote work (“remotable” jobs; for example, software engineering and marketing) to changes among people in nonremotable jobs (such as mechanical engineering and nursing)" - in other words, they did not actually check if anyone in these jobs was working remotely. They compared job categories. They did not compare remote workers to non-remote workers. This is an analysis of the depression of software developers vs the depression of mechanics.

- "During this exact window, the tech, finance, and corporate sectors experienced massive waves of layoffs, "efficiency" mandates, and economic anxiety. The increased mental distress measured in the "remotable" cohort could easily be a reaction to job insecurity and macroeconomic stressors rather than social isolation. Conversely, non-remotable workers (like healthcare and retail workers) experienced their most intense, traumatic burnout during the acute pandemic phase" - There were mass tech layoffs in 2022-2024, and those people who got laid off were more depressed.

- "Psychological literature draws a hard line between objective isolation (solitude/time spent alone) and subjective isolation (loneliness). Increased time spent alone does not uniformly equal distress. For many workers, particularly introverts or neurodivergent individuals, working alone reduces the overstimulation and distress caused by open-plan offices."* - Remote workers are more likely to be introverts, and introverts like alone time.

- "The post-2020 era saw a massive boom in the availability of telehealth psychiatry and therapy. Workers in "remotable" jobs are vastly more likely to have high-quality corporate health insurance and the daytime flexibility to attend a midday virtual therapy session." - A lot of us got BetterHelp access through our insurance and jobs after the pandemic, and this is partly why there was more use of mental health services.

_HMCB_• 2 months ago

I’m just here for all the tech bro comments saying that this couldn’t be true.

chrisbrandow2• 2 months ago

This is so obviously true. Most people that had sudden wfh transitions after or during COVID that I know even with well established networks and families, have really grieved the loss of daily contact with coworkers.

diiaann• 2 months ago

It became clear to me that just a little bit of socializing during the work day goes a long way.

I have a partner that I live with but he often works long hours in person so I can sympathize with someone living alone.

With remote work, I hated the feeling of having every human interaction be very transactional all day. As a result, I felt more pressure to make plans during the weekday with remote counterbalance how completely some days felt.

In the office, you'd usually have some friendly chatter, running into people in the hallway, getting a snack, or waiting for a meeting to start. And most of the time, that was more than enough to not feel a sense of malaise.

snvzz• 2 months ago

Hell is other people.

--Sartre

kisamoto• 2 months ago

We focused on occupation-level shifts in remote work rather than personal choices, as decisions to work remotely may themselves reflect individuals’ mental health status
Understanding remote work’s impact on mental health is important for workers deciding where to work

Remote work is not for everyone so if you are someone who predominantly makes their social connections in an office being forced to work remotely will have an impact.

However I think a lot who choose to work remotely have friends outside of work. I know this study focuses on those who live alone but it may also be very different for those who live with a partner/family/friends.

Anecdotally I have found that people who want social interaction in the office push for everyone in the office (rather selfishly in my opinion) because without enough people in - for example in a hybrid model - they don’t get the same kick.

penguin_booze• 2 months ago

Our results suggest that remote work substantially increases isolation and worsens mental health, particularly for those living alone

I don't know whom they were asking. If they had come to me, I'd have said 'hell yeah' - make remote work a legal requirement'.

anal_reactor• 2 months ago

My problem is that I am highly extrovert, but I just don't like most people. When I go to most places where I'm supposed to socialize, I end up not doing so, simply because we don't "click". Work is the only place where I've managed to meet non-zero number of people with whom we mutually enjoy our company.

I think remote work is amazing if you already have a strong social network outside of work, but if you don't, then it's "in order to make friends, you need to have friends".

xg154• 2 months ago

Paper: People working from home all alone have a greater risk of mental health problems.

HN: Preposterous!

Jamesbeam• 2 months ago

I respect the work, but for most of the world, this paper is absolutely useless.

And the scientists don’t seem to be aware of this, because later on in the conclusion they talk about what other governments can learn from this, policy-wise.

The severe flaw in this logic, unless with other governments they mean state-wise within the US, is that it only looks at US Americans, who have a very own subset of unique variables you hardly see in other parts of the world and populations that do influence the outcome.

America is a pill-popping nation.

https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/americans-will-spend...

And the health education of the average American is rather poor, with over 60% of U.S. adults demonstrating inadequate health literacy in this study from 2025.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221133552...

What surprises me here is the shortsighted conclusion.

How can you conclude this:

"Although a large body of research finds that workers want to work remotely, our findings suggest that workers may not realise the costs of remote work for their well-being, which may take time to accumulate. Understanding remote work’s impact on mental health is important for workers deciding where to work and for firms and governments setting remote-work policies."

Rather than, obviously, we have to deal with a highly health-uneducated overall population in the US, that is overall less resilient to mental distress, tends to look for quick fixes (pill popping) rather than eliminating the factors causing the need to take pills in the first place, and that is largely unable to develop strategies on their own to deal with temporarily forced isolation and has severe problems adapting to rapidly changing external factors and the mental load they put on the individual.

How can we teach the average American to be more resilient, have better health education so they can make better decisions and get them off so many pills?

I know. This study examined how remote work affects isolation and mental distress.

And therefore not the root cause of the underlying systemic problems.

But it is annoying to see smart people who should know and see the root of the problems, rather looking for grant money than for solutions.

xchip2• 2 months ago

Nvidia fully supports remote work, people love it and they are doing great, not sure why others companies have issues with this.

realjohng• 2 months ago

I can say I agree with the thesis. I live alone and have been working remotely and have been struggling with this issue.

If I don’t plan something social end of day, it can feel like a lonely existence.

Occasionally I will go into office and sometimes it leads to good conversations with people outside of my team, which is nice. I do tend to skip it though since it requires effort and planning.

For those looking for ideas, do a sport in evening after work. Or small group fitness classes, maybe you will see a regular you connect with. Dance and art classes are same and mentally relaxing.

I will say the 1hr evening class doesn’t feel enough. I’ve thought about getting a dog many times.

gmiller123456• 2 months ago

My experience is the exact opposite. I worked remotely for a good 10 years, after a buyout we returned to the office for a couple years, and returned to remote during 2020.

When working from home, when 5pm hits, the first thing I want to do is get out of the house. I do lots of group activities, hiking, kayaking, cycling, pool, trivia, photography, etc.

When I have to go in to the office, when 5pm hits, all I want to do is go home. Once I'm home, I'm much less likely to leave.

I understand I'm a sample size of one. And even though several of my who work from home friends feel the same way, it's obvious I never meet the people who stay at home. But I'm curiious as to whether the people staying at home would go out if they worked in an office. Seems like that'd make most sense if you're hanging out with people you work with, which I don't do much. But I doubt there's a good sample size of people who've switched back and forth.

storus• 2 months ago

Not sitting in a noisy open office surrounded by colleagues that hate and backstab each other but instead at home seems to me like a major mental health win. Instead we got "remote work bad" study... Feels like another soft science "desired outcome" result.

foysauce• 1 month ago

I'm seeing most people's arguments here explaining that remote work has given them the opportunity to voluntarily engage in extra curricular social functions.

I think to them, they are totally right that remote work leaves them with enough energy for them to do this, and they are happier for it. What I'm concerned with is the people who do not naturally have such a drive to seek this out, but for whom social activities would be equally important whether they realize it or not.

Personally I find the friction of leaving the house and making new friends in a city I'm not from difficult to overcome, and in this case I love having an easy way to meet people (and in some cases make some of my longest lasting connections) by simply going to the office 2-3 days a week.

Home alone: Remote work, isolation, and mental health

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