Can the home furnishings industry stem social isolation?

Furniture brand founder Roxy Owens and art photographer Nick Mele have collaborated on the launch of a luxury gaming furniture collection debuting this week.

The eight-piece Pause Life, Play Games line for Owens’ Society Social includes the Checkmate game table (starting at $3,695) and the Gambit gaming chair (starting at $695) with custom finishes and upholstery options.

Mele photographed the collection at the Highlander Mountain House in Highlands, North Carolina, with select images being released as part of his new limited edition fine art series, “Game Night.”

And not to be too bold, but the collection — and other furnishings and accessories that encourage gathering together at home — are exactly what Americans need.

‘Choose community’

A couple of years ago, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared that the United States was in the midst of a loneliness epidemic, saying a third of adults and half of young people experience loneliness. As he prepared to leave his post this month, Murthy issued a “parting prescription” indicating the loneliness epidemic has not abated.  

“My final wish for all of us: Choose community,” he wrote. “… Relationships are the connections we build with friends, family, neighbors, co-workers and others we encounter. Healthy relationships where we feel seen and where we can be ourselves can be a powerful source of joy and support and can be buffers to stress.”

The Covid-19 pandemic turned many of our homes into refuges, where we hunkered down and retreated from the world. As the pandemic eased, many of us sprinted back into the world, eating out, going to concerts and sporting events, traveling.

Today, we may be busy, but we remain isolated. We’re spending more time than ever alone and replacing in-person connections with social media follows and screen time, says Derek Thompson, who recently wrote an article for The Atlantic headlined, “The Anti-Social Century.”

“Americans are spending less time with other people than in any other period for which we have trustworthy data, going back to 1965. Between that year and the end of the 20th century, in-person socializing slowly declined,” Thompson writes. “From 2003 to 2023, it plunged by more than 20%, according to the American Time Use Survey, an annual study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

Thompson points to other telling statistics:  

* Before the pandemic, 61% of all restaurant traffic was takeout and delivery. By 2023, it had jumped to 74%. And that trend is tied to more people eating alone. “The share of U.S. adults having dinner or drinks with friends on any given night has declined by more than 30% in the past 20 years,” Thompson says.

* The average American buys only three movie tickets a year but watches the equivalent of eight movies at home each week. “In entertainment, as in dining,” Thompson writes, “modernity has transformed a ritual of togetherness into an experience of homebound reclusion and even solitude.”

“I’ve spoken with psychologists, political scientists, sociologists and technologists about America’s anti-social streak,” Thompson says. “Although the particulars of these conversations differed, a theme emerged: The individual preference for solitude, scaled up across society and exercised repeatedly over time, is rewiring America’s civic and psychic identity. And the consequences are far-reaching — for our happiness, our communities, our politics and even our understanding of reality.” Spoiler alert: Those consequences are largely negative.

Gathering again

In a hopeful sign, some designers and real estate agents are seeing a return of more people entertaining in their homes.

Emily Waldmann, an Austin, Texas-based real estate agent for Douglas Elliman, told GOBankingRates.com, that many homebuyers are “gravitating towards a living space that is built around socialization and entertaining, separate from where they might watch TV, and a butler’s pantry or a kitchen that is slightly removed from the entertaining spaces. Each of these speak to the trend of hosting and entertaining guests coming back in the post-pandemic era.”

Similarly, in a forecast of 2025 interior design trends, Veranda magazine noted that more homeowners are prioritizing living room layouts focused on entertaining rather than TV watching. “New York-based designer Sasha Bikoff explains that she has been working with clients to design multilayered living rooms featuring distinct seating groups that are oriented toward promoting conversation and activities,” according to the article.

Making it easy to entertain

A few years ago, furniture and art source Four Hands introduced a high-end gaming collection that included a poker and foosball tables. Tupelo Goods, a maker of outdoor furnishings, includes a luxury cornhole set among its offerings. Society Social’s entire line is designed with everyday gatherings and celebrations in mind. It’s new Checkmate game table, part of the line I talked about earlier, is a mahogany table with traditional cabriole legs and a grass cloth storage inset that offers an ideal spot to tuck away board games, puzzles, cards and happy hour accessories.

Such items encourage people to step away from the screens and interact with friends and family face to face.

Designers can play a role in encouraging in-home entertaining and socializing — from dinner parties to family board game nights to neighborhood backyard barbecues — by incorporating pieces in living spaces that encourage gathering. Consider adding beverage bars, minifridges and tiny pantries to living spaces to make it easy for homeowners to pull snacks together for impromptu parties. Build in cabinets to store old-fashioned board games and outfit outdoor spaces with activities like oversized Jenga and tic-tac-toe sets.

Most designers are already quite good at hiding TVs and other screens, but let’s encourage homeowners to orient their furniture and their lives away from those screens, not just tuck them away.

“The anti-social century is the result of … (a) cascade … of chosen solitude, accelerated by digital-world progress and physical-world regress,” Thompson writes in The Atlantic piece. “But if one cascade brought us into an anti-social century, another can bring about a social century.”

Let’s be part of that new cascade toward a social century.