Noreena Hertz - The Lonely Century: How to Restore Human Connection in a World Thats Pulling Apart

September 24, 2019. I am waiting, seated at the window, my back against the pretty-in-pink wall.

My phone pings. Its Brittanyshes running a few minutes late.

No worries, I message back. Cool choice of place. And it is. The effortlessly beautiful, gazellelike clientele, with their fashion-model portfolios under their arms, hint at just how hip Cha Cha Matcha in Manhattans NoHo district feels.

A few beats later, she arrives. Long-limbed, athletic, she scans the room, her smile widening as I come into her gaze. Hey, love your dress, she says.

For forty dollars an hour, Id expect no less. For Brittany is the friend I have rented for the afternoon from a company called RentAFriend. Founded by New Jersey entrepreneur Scott Rosenbaum, who had seen the concept take off in Japan, and now operating in dozens of countries around the world, the company offers over 620,000 platonic friends for hire online.

This wasnt the career path Brittany, a twenty-three-year-old small-town Floridian, had intended when she won her place at Brown. Yet, having been unable to secure a job in environmental science (the subject she majored in at university) and anxious about her levels of student debt, she explains her decision to rent out her company as a pragmatic one, her emotional labor as just another monetizable string to her bow. When shes not renting herself outon average she does so a few times a weekshe helps start-ups with their social media postings and offers executive assistant services via TaskRabbit.

Before we met up I was pretty nervous, not sure if friend was covert speak for sexual partner, or even if Id recognize her from her profile picture. But within minutes I feel reassured that this is friends-without-benefits territory. And over the next few hours, as we wander around downtown Manhattan chatting about #MeToo, her heroine Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and, at McNally Jackson, our favorite books, at times I even forget I am paying for Brittanys company. Although she doesnt feel like an old friend, she does feel like a fun new prospect.

But it is at Urban Outfitters on Broadway that she really ramps up the charm, just as the meter on our encounter begins to run out. Smile now perma-fixed, banter upped, she joshes with me as we rummage through a pile of T-shirts and gamely joins me in trying on Crayola-colored bucket hats. Apparently they really suit me. Although presumably she would tell me that whether it was true or not.

I ask Brittany about the others whove hired her, my fellow friendship-consumers. She tells me of the soft-spoken woman who didnt want to show up at a party alone; the techie from Delhi who had moved to Manhattan for work, didnt know anyone in town, and wanted company at dinner; the banker who offered to come over with chicken soup when she was sick. If you had to sum up your typical clientele, what would you say, I ask her. Her answer: Lonely, thirty-to-forty-year-old professionals. The kind of people who work long hours and dont seem to have time to make many friends.

Its a sign of our times that today I can order companionship as easily as I can a cheeseburger with just a few taps on my phone, that what I call a Loneliness Economy has emerged to supportand in some cases exploitthose who feel alone. But in the twenty-first century, the loneliest century we have known, Brittanys overworked professionals are not the only ones suffering; the tentacles of loneliness reach much further.

Even before the coronavirus triggered a social recession with its toxification of face-to-face contact, three in five U.S. adults considered themselves lonely.

In Europe, it was a similar story. In Germany, two-thirds of the population believed loneliness to be a serious problem.

In the United Kingdom, the problem had become so significant that in 2018 the prime minister went so far as to appoint a Minister for Loneliness.

Inevitably, months of lockdowns, self-isolation, and social distancing have made this problem even worse.