I assumed this would one day be part of my life, too: regular trips to deposit checks, buy groceries, fill prescriptions, pay for photo prints, return rented videos, and occasionally compare screw sizes in the hardware store. But in my high-tech adulthood, I can do all of these chores from home. Banking happens in an app. Groceries and just about anything else can be delivered. Video stores and photo labs are practically extinct in the age of camera phones and streaming.
Errands were a burden, sure, but they were a reason to leave the house. Without the obligation to go places, it’s easy to spend all day alone, switching from paying bills on my phone to watching videos on my phone to passively scrolling on my phone, ignoring the outside world and the people in it. Even the indulgences running errands allowed—a gourmet coffee or a fast-food combo meal—can be ordered ahead or dropped off.
For nonperishable deliveries, a doorbell camera lets you avoid going to the door to greet a stranger. You can stare through a virtual peephole all day, monitoring when packages arrive and clandestinely recording any passersby who look at them.
“It gives us this false sense of control and individuality if we’re just staying in our little box and having things come to us,” says Dr. Gillian Sandstrom, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Sussex and the author of Once Upon a Stranger, a book on the value of small interactions. Sandstrom cites research showing that people who have a wider variety of encounters—a polite nod with a stranger, a short conversation with a clerk, or a deep chat with a friend—tend to be happier.
Outings also give us a chance to practice how we interact with the world. There’s a reason they’re called social “skills,” Sandstrom notes. “How are you going to make a new friend? How are you going to go to a job interview?” she asks. “It feels like a really horrible idea to not have all these little opportunities to practice.”
Errands could be a time for deeper socializing: an opportunity to catch up with a friend who had to do the same chores or who was bored at home and might come along. The places where we did chores and the pit stops in between served as de facto “third places.” As patronage drops, these centers of casual social interaction can’t stay open. Big box megastores and, later, e-commerce have led to empty storefronts in many towns’ main streets. High urban rents and a more isolated population make the business model for third places increasingly precarious.
Now, the in-person customer is often secondary to the virtual one. Sometimes the in-person customer becomes a virtual one, as businesses push visitors to order from digital kiosks. Some commercial restaurant space has been taken over by ghost kitchens—restaurants that only serve customers who order online and get their food delivered.
I’m tempted to spend the time I save with digital errands watching TV or a movie. But as producers increasingly make “second-screen” content designed for people to watch while they also look at their phones, it can feel like there is no escape from a phone-centric life. The two-screen experience is just distracting enough to keep me from thinking about what else I could do with my time.
It’s a little dystopian to imagine using every replacement for errands at once—streaming and scrolling while waiting for groceries and a fast-food delivery; sitting alone and being waited on by gig workers and digital assistants.
The upside of digitization, perhaps, is that without the need to run as many physical errands, we could devote more time to activities that are more rewarding. That’s if we can find a place for them and if we can recognize what we need, instead of just getting whatever we want.
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