By Jac Cochran
A recent study found that 57% of college students report feeling lonely. Almost everyone is aware of the mental health crisis among teenagers. Thousands of articles and TV segments have proposed causes ranging from smart phones to vaccines. But among all those theories, few have focused on the physical spaces that shape our everyday lives.
Third spaces are social environments — separate from the home and the school- or work-place — where people can gather to socialize, relax, and engage in activities distinct from their daily routines. They are crucial for creating community, fostering connection, and developing social skills. They could also play a key role in improving mental health and belonging among America’s teenagers.
When I arrived at the University of Virginia, I felt excited and hopeful. While incredibly nervous about leaving home, my family and my friends, I was ready to seize everything that UVA has to offer. I wanted to have a rich social life and a successful academic career, to find an intramural soccer team and a go-to late night hangout spot; I wanted to be happy. But college is a big change. Adjusting to an entirely new place with so many new faces and routines can be overwhelming, and finding a place, or group of people, to fit in with can be daunting.
My first year at UVA was lonely. Within a couple weeks, it seemed like everyone around me had found their friends and their place within the university — and that it was already set in stone. While the vast majority of new people I met were very friendly, it just didn’t click. I had a hard time finding my people, I had a hard time even finding a place to look.
In high school, soccer was a big part of my social life. The fields were my third space, where I would spend afternoons after school kicking the ball with my friends. Yet as a first-year without a car, getting to any field was difficult. At UVA, there are no soccer fields near first-year dorms. Whether through bad planning, financial restrictions or city boundaries, the space just didn’t exist. I often needed 45 minutes to walk from my dorm to the nearest field, with no guarantee that a club sports or fraternity wouldn’t be using it when I arrived. Intramural sports suffered from similar problems. Games were held at night, off grounds (UVA speak for “off campus”), at the facility for graduate students. Making the journey by bicycle felt borderline unsafe. My route to these fields was poorly lit and parts of it were without sidewalks or bike lanes. My roommate and I would pedal as fast as possible while also trying to avoid the often reckless, college drivers.
Then, during a somewhat gentler ride to a campus event, I was hit by a car. My bike was ruined, but outside of a few cuts and bruises, I escaped physically unscathed. The real damage was done to my psyche. If I had been hit on grounds in the middle of the afternoon, then think of how likely was I to be hit at night on the dark, windy roads to my soccer games? Biking to faraway activities seemed like less of an option, and I began to feel increasingly stranded.
Soccer had been my outlet and main way of meeting new people; without it, I wasn’t totally sure what to do. On grounds, I couldn’t find places to socialize or relax away from the stresses of school. Libraries were quiet and stressful, my dorm was divided into suites with their doors always closed, and dining halls were filled with students on their phones instead of in conversation. After my first year, I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to come back.
In my second year, I moved into a new place, with new roommates and opportunities. Our apartment was closer to the soccer fields, but it was also nearer to other spaces that I never would have imagined. When I finally found those spaces, they became invaluable.
I discovered some tennis courts across the street from my apartment, so I joined UVA’s Pickleball Club, where I made friends and started attending weekly practices. One of my roommates was a transfer who noticed that UVA didn’t have a history club like his previous school did; soI helped him found the History Club at UVA and served as its Vice President. That spring, I applied and was accepted into Batten, UVA’s public policy school, where I entered a community of peers with similar interests. I finally felt like I was finding spaces where I belonged.
My story is not unique — at least the first part isn’t. I was quite lucky in finding my personal third spaces. Even through tough times, I had a great support system at home and an amazing girlfriend. Many other students at universities across the U.S. go through these same experiences, or worse, and don’t have support. In fact, of the majority of undergraduates who reported loneliness, over 10% reported that they always felt lonely. This tracks with a plethora of data showing the dramatic rise in anxiety and depression among college students, with 18–25 being the most anxious age group by far.
The impacts of these mental illnesses are well documented, and while responses to this veritable epidemic tend to focus on treatments like therapy and medication (which are no doubt important), prevention often receives less attention. Mental health is a product of a variety of factors, both external and internal, and the physical environments we live in are an often overlooked component. The spaces that we inhabit can have huge impacts on our daily life and wellbeing. Yet, third spaces are not only relatively unknown, but also on the decline.
While fully reviving third spaces would require a massive political and social undertaking including zoning reform, correcting the incentive structure for developers and bringing back civic organizations, just knowing what they are is an important first step. By learning about and spreading awareness of third spaces, we can bring them into conversations about mental health, social cohesion, and community building. We can start to appreciate where they are and recognize where they are missing. We can advocate for their presence.
And this doesn’t just apply to college students. We should all focus more on the physical spaces that shape our communities. Everyone deserves to find spaces to belong, spaces to relax away from the stresses of life, and spaces to socialize — just as I did.
Jac Cochran is a recent graduate from the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. When he’s not at work or home, his favorite third space is the pickleball court.
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