I'll give you some quick examples of what I mean by erasure of 3rd places:
- Shopping malls are completely dead
- Entertainment/nightlife is dying (it was already dying before Covid, and post-Covid it's only gotten worse)
- Coffee shops went from social hangouts to office spaces
- Public spaces, parks, plazas, outdoor venues/markets, dense urban areas are being erased or commercialized/corporitized
- Increasing suburban sprawl and car-dependency (which decreases social cohesion in and of itself)
- Erasure of mixed-use urbanist zones in cities (everything now is either single family homes or purely commercial spaces)
- Community groups/events like sports clubs, trivia nights, bowling leagues, hobby shops, etc, are dying
- Rent/homeownership is decreasing, as is car ownership, leading to even more isolation
I don't blame social media on much of this. I've recently begun to view social media as a symptom, not a cause. The reason people are using it so much now is they don't have an alternative.
People made the same arguments towards social media that they used to make towards printing press/newspapers, television, radio, telephones, video games, etc. History does not repeat, it rhymes. While I do abhor social media and recognize it as a net negative for society, I think people are too quick to blame it on everything.