BOMA International Special Report: The Nation Needs CRE’s Power to Connect, Smerconish Says
The shift to remote work, and the dramatic decline in office use that followed, is often viewed as mostly a concern for owners, managers, occupants and other stakeholders. Yet Michael Smerconish sees it as part of a prime example of an even larger and worrisome trend.
“We have lost so much as a society because so many are working remotely,” the commentator and media personality said during a wide-ranging keynote address at BOMA International’s annual convention in Philadelphia on Sunday.
The remote-work trend is a telling symptom of broader feelings of social isolation. Smerconish cited studies indicating that workers feel markedly less connected to their colleagues than they did just a few years ago.
That is a reversal from Smerconish’s own experience decades ago as a young lawyer in Philadelphia. On the daily commute to his office, he would routinely encounter people from multiple walks of life and across the economic spectrum. The rise of remote work has further limited those opportunities, and Smerconish called it evidence that “the class divide is shutting down interaction.”
How to reconnect
The upshot: to re-establish those social ties, “We have got to physically get back to work in-person. Remote work is depriving people of opportunities to connect, diminishing a valuable source of friendship and reducing the depth of those friendships.”
Smerconish introduced his address with a compelling parallel. More than half of children today get to school in a private vehicle, rather than on a traditional yellow bus like the one that Smerconish once rode as a student in Bucks County, Pa. “I learned a lot riding bus number 5 … about social interaction, friendship and—from Mr. Larlick—respect.” He was referring to the bus driver, a fondly remembered, no-nonsense Navy veteran.
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Smerconish warned of other social ills that threaten the fabric of society and, research suggests, increasingly appear to stem from social isolation. A 2023 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that in 2021, 30 percent of teenage girls had considered attempting suicide, and 57 percent reported persistent sadness and hopelessness.
Virtual impacts
Multiple studies show that both boys and men feel more isolated, and have fewer friends, than in past years. Social media and the internet do much to shape these trends, Smerconish said, noting that U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently called on Congress to mandate labels warning that social media poses a health risk for teenagers. “We need to protect our kids more in the virtual world and less in the real world,” Smerconish asserted.
Smerconish also touched on other gaps that have widened dramatically. As a media figure himself, Smerconish attributes a sizeable share of responsibility for the public’s polarization in some political areas as on other political topics. “A mixed media diet is what the country needs,” he asserted.
And Smerconish argued that on many issues, Americans share opinions and beliefs on more issues than is generally recognized; he pointed to studies suggesting that public opinion often still resembles a bell curve that peaks in the middle, rather than a barbell that’s weighted most heavily on its extreme ends.
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