#49 - Reviving Third Places for Millennials & Gen Z

Welcome to the Talk to People Podcast.

My name is Chris Miller, and if you've never been here before, let me quickly say this whole podcast is about improving social connection in young adults.

I believe that life is better when you talk to people, and if you're like me, you may have graduated college, and you find yourself trying to find a good community, trying to find relationships that sustain you, trying to find people to laugh with, or share the good news and the bad news.

And I think a lot of us are there.

I think oftentimes, whenever I'm outside and I'm talking to, I say, I'm outside, I'll hear stories about young adults telling me, hey, I wish I had more people.

And I won't have all the answers, and we won't be able to cure loneliness right here.

But what we will do is unpack concepts.

Oftentimes, we have guests on, and the whole goal is how can we improve as a community and social connection?

How can we become more socially healthy, more socially fit, so that we don't feel lonely, and so that we feel part of this beautiful community that we all get to be a part of?

So I want to talk about something really important today.

Stick around till the end, because I'm going to start with a little research.

I'm going to share a story.

And then I'm going to talk about how it applies to you and share with you how everything that I'm talking about can be possible in your community.

So first off, let's start with a little research.

I'll pop this research up on the video.

And if you're listening on audio, I'll narrate the research.

But this is a study that was recently done called On Edge, Understanding and Preventing Young Adults Mental Health Challenges.

So this was a shared study done by Harvard Graduate School of Education in the Making Caring Common Project.

The whole goal or the whole focus of the study was looking at the cohort young adults out of the whole demographic and seeing what they're struggling with.

Now, I'm starting with this because in the executive summary, it says that legions of young adults appear to be struggling with relationship deficits.

34% report loneliness, 44% report not mattering to others.

It goes on by talking about financial worries, 56%, 51% talk about achievement pressure, and then 58% report that they lack meaning or purpose in their lives.

According to our nationally representative survey, young adults report roughly twice the rates of anxiety and depression as teens.

So this is different than being a teenager.

This is more than likely you're in your 20s, your early 30s, you may have graduated college, you may have left high school, begun a career, you may have gone to the military, and you leave the military, maybe you're still in the military.

There's a lot of different options that you could be in, but overall, as young adults, we're not doing that well.

The next thing I want to talk to you about is, the next thing I want to show you is findings from a research study.

This is the, let's see what this one came from.

This is from More In Common, so it's an international organization that strives to bring people together, essentially.

They have a director in the US, a director in the UK.

They do a whole bunch of different stuff, and it's a pretty cool thing.

And they did a research program, and they did a research report about connecting beyond differences.

So people out there who are different than you or myself, what does it take for us to connect, and what's preventing us from connecting?

And it showed that the biggest barrier was lack of opportunity.

Okay, so just to recap, we have a ton of young adults who are saying that they're lonely.

So relationship deficits.

So this is showing 34% lonely, 44% say they don't matter to others.

They feel that way at least.

And then 58% say they lack meaning or purpose.

Then whenever we look at the study done by More In Common, we see that the biggest reported barrier for connecting among differences is lack of opportunity.

So no opportunity.

Lastly, I want to talk to you about a podcast that I saw, and I'm gonna bring all of this together, so stick with me.

A podcast I saw with Jeff Hall, and I've had Jeff Hall on the podcast before, but he talked about how lonely people are less likely to reach out.

So if you were to take a lonely person, and you take a, not like a connected person, someone who feels socially nourished, the person who feels socially nourished is gonna be more likely to initiate conversation, reach out to somebody, than the other person would, than the lonely person would.

And this sucks because the lonely person needs it even more than the connected person, yet they're gonna be less likely to do it.

So, when you think about this, it gets kinda tough, because typically loneliness leads to more anxiety and more depression, and typically that leads to feeling like you don't matter, lack of meaning.

And the last thing is a study that's talking about reaching out.

And this study looked at different people, and it had one person reach out to another person, and then it went and it asked the person, what did it mean to you to get reached out to?

And it asked the person who reached out as well.

And one big surprising study was, or one big surprising result was that it means a ton to people whenever they get reached out to.

And it means a lot more to people than the other person who reached out would expect.

So it's unexpected, like, oh wow, I would have never guessed that it meant that much.

So reaching out means more than you think.

Okay, so there's some research.

We know that there's a ton of young adults, legions of young adults, who feel lonely.

They feel like they don't matter, they don't feel connected to the broader network, and the majority of them are feeling a lack of meaning.

Whenever people are asked, how do you connect to people who are different than you, they say that they don't have the opportunity.

We know that lonely people are less likely to reach out to others compared to connected people, so we have to figure out what does that mean.

And then we know that if we reach out to someone, it means much more to them than you would expect.

So I'm gonna talk to y'all about something called MSP.

MSP was something that happened in my life this year, and it didn't exist prior to this year.

That's because I created it.

MSP is Morning Soccer Pickup.

So my story is I spent a long time as a corporate health care IT trainer.

I say a longer time, it was only like two years, but I was traveling a ton.

I was never around.

And one of the things I craved was to have a consistent community, to have friends that I could see each week.

I'd find myself in like Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton Inn and Suites, in states that I didn't live in.

First time I've ever been there was for work.

Then I'd leave at the end of the week.

I'd never go back again.

It wasn't fun.

So whenever I left my job, I joined a basketball group.

I learned that I wasn't good at basketball.

So then I created a soccer group.

And this soccer group meets three times throughout the week.

It meets Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 5:45 a.m.

at a community park that's indoor.

So it's a community center that has turf.

It's free of charge, and anyone can come.

Thanks for.

And the reason why I did this was, I needed people, and I couldn't find a good soccer group.

So I thought to myself, well, the only way things exist is if people create them.

So I took it upon myself to create the soccer group.

And initially, it was just me and myself kicking the ball around.

And I looked, I did some research, and I learned about LASL, which is Lawrence Adult Soccer League.

And I reached out to them, and I said, hey, do you think you could promote the soccer group?

And after three emails, somebody messaged me back and they said, yes, we can promote the soccer group.

So next time I showed up, it was actually two or three people.

And then the next iteration, say on Wednesday, it was about three people, then four people, and all I had was some cones and a soccer ball.

And after a while, this group began to grow, and it began to grow and grow and grow.

And a big reason why was because it was accessible, it happened the same time each week, it was out in the public, and anyone could come.

Now, gotta figure out how to do my logical navigation here to bring this all together.

Now, what I did was in doing this, I wasn't thinking about it, but one of the things I've been learning about lately is the power of a third place.

So a third place is referred to as, well, I'll tell you what a third place isn't.

A third place isn't your home.

Your home is your first place.

A third place isn't your work.

Your work is your second place.

A third place is where you come and you get to meet friends, you get the social support.

Historically, third places are like pub culture, right?

Imagine going to the pub, if you've ever seen Cheers, and it's like, where everybody knows your name.

That is what people want.

They want to show up to a place to where everybody knows who they are and there's that social web that they get to be a part of.

But unfortunately for young adults, this is kind of going by the wayside.

And there's several reasons why.

We could look at the digital culture that we're in, more likely to interact with people through a computer, computer mediated communication than we are face to face.

But at the same time, things are changing, right?

A lot of coffee shops closed down due to COVID.

A lot of places where people hang out now require you to pay.

People are working more.

Whenever you're a young adult, more than likely you're going to be potentially get married, you move, you get a new job, you have kids.

All of these are factors that indirectly promote loneliness because you're not really able to.

It may switch up something in your life.

So a third place is what you need.

And if you already have a third place, that's great.

Maybe every single week you go to somewhere and you get to be a part of a group and a network.

But a lot of people don't have third places.

And what I want to talk about today is how you can create a third place and why you should create a third place for yourself but also for others around you.

Now MSP is an example of a third place.

It's accessible, people come, it happens the same time each week.

And I want to talk about these things for a successful third place, what you need, and kind of talk about how to do it.

So the reason why third places are so important is if we go back and we look at all of that research, people who feel like they're lonely, people who feel like they don't have opportunity, lonely people are less likely to reach out, and whenever you do reach out, it means a lot.

So all of this comes together in saying, if you have the capability, the ability, I guess those are both the same words, but if you have the ability to put a third place together and you have the bandwidth to go after it, then you should be going after it, because not only will it help you, but it will help all of those people who start coming to your third place.

I've had people who come to MSP and they say, this is the best part of my week.

Someone recently responded in the group me that I created for it, who said, I've never been in better shape.

I just went to the doctor and we did a physical, and he said that my health is great.

And it's because he got to run around.

That's awesome.

I wasn't expecting that.

But he keeps coming because there's a network of people.

So, let's talk about you and where you're at in your third place, okay?

If you already have a third place, then go ahead and be thinking about it.

Because I'm going to encourage you to improve your current one or to create a new one.

Now, the first step of any third place is it needs to be something that you're naturally interested in.

If you're not interested in it, don't start it.

So there needs to be interest there.

For me, that was soccer.

It could be an activity, like book reading.

It could be playing a certain sport, sewing, something like that.

Or, hmm, I guess, is it around?

Is it always around activities?

Potentially it is.

But just pick something that you're interested in.

Then you want recurrence.

I believe that's a word.

You want it to be reoccurring.

It happens every single blank.

It could happen every week.

It could happen every other week.

At this time, it could happen three times a week.

But you want it to be at the same time each week.

That way people can bake it into their schedules.

In order for things to really last, it needs to be obtainable and sustainable.

So you need to get, you need to make it to where people can come, and then you need to make it to where it's easy for people to come over and over again.

So it needs to be reoccurring.

It also needs to be somewhat assessable.

Going on a mountain trip to Arizona is fun.

You get to climb all of the, or let's go Utah.

You get to climb all of the really pretty mountains and take photo shoots.

But I wouldn't really consider that a third place unless you live right beside the mountains in Utah and you can keep going back.

That's more of a fun trip.

So the place needs to be assessable.

It does not have to be your house.

If you want to, you can invite people into your house.

I think that's incredible.

I know a lot of people are struggling, one, to buy a house, and two, like we just moved in to a new place and it's hard to get it up.

It's hard to get it going.

I'm like, do I have enough chairs for people to sit down in?

You know, I'm thinking about this stuff often.

So, but if you can do it in your house, that's pretty accessible, right?

You just give people your address.

It's easy for you.

And, or, but with that in mind, it doesn't have to be your house.

It could be a local place.

It could be a coffee shop.

It could be the gym, you name it, but it is a place to where the people who you're going after can come.

So there needs to be interest on your half.

It needs to be reoccurring.

It needs to be accessible.

And lastly, I hope you could see this, but there needs to be a purpose.

Why does your third place exist?

Why does this event that's reoccurring exist?

What's the point?

Mine is pretty simple.

I want to create a tri-weekly three times a week soccer sandbox.

So what is a sandbox?

It's something that anybody can come in and anybody can leave.

It is not a league.

There's not a registration fee.

We're not going to have a set team.

If you can't make it one day, that's completely fine.

If you can make it the next day, that's great.

We'd love to have you.

So in making it with this purpose, I've had to say no to some things in my head.

Like, should we try and make money off of this?

No.

Should we try and hire referees and create these league times?

No.

No refs.

Call your own fouls.

The Wild Wild West, it exists.

If people are looking for more of the league, more of the structured format, then I can tell them about the soccer league that's in my area.

If they're looking for a sandbox, cool, come here.

If they're not looking for either, they're looking for something different.

Well, I hope they're watching or listening and they can create it.

Lonely people aren't going to reach out and say, hey, are they less likely to?

So they need to be invited, but you need to have something to invite people to.

And whenever you put together a third place, you get to invite people to something.

And not only that, whenever they're leaving, you get to invite them again and again.

You say, hey, are you coming back on Wednesday?

Well, I see you on Wednesday.

And maybe they'll say yes.

Maybe they'll say no.

But it starts the web.

And one person gets invited to play soccer.

And then that person's going to invite somebody else.

And the web may not keep growing and growing because there's only so many people who play soccer in my area and people get injured like me right now.

But this person may have been all the way out here.

No web.

But now they're connected.

And they get to connect more people.

And guess what?

When they're connected just a little bit, it makes them more likely to reach out to somebody else.

So by connecting people who may be struggling, you are giving them fuel in their social battery to go even further.

So I want to charge you, I want to challenge you to think about what is that third place that you can build for your local community.

What is it?

It may not even be you inviting strangers to this event.

It may be people that you know, acquaintances.

But put something together.

At least start thinking about it.

I promise you it will change your life and a lot of other lives that you would have never expected or guessed.

Thank you all for watching, for listening.

Remember, life is better when you talk to people and continue to prioritize human relationships.

I'm using this lapau mic.

I hope the audio is good.

If it's not, I apologize.

I don't think I'm gonna run this back.

So if it sounds different than what the audio typically sounds like, thanks for being flexible.

All right, folks, I'll see you next time.

See you next time.