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Most people would kill for a work-from-home job, but it turns out it can have some grim effects on your mental health.
A new study published in the journal Science found that remote workers were more likely to report feeling anxious, depressed, and being socially isolated compared to people who worked in-office. No commute and having the comforts of home is undoubtedly an upside, but it seems there’s no substitute for genuine social connections.
Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business who wasn’t involved in the study, told NPR that workers might be underestimating the value of being to “reach out to connect with other people,” and that “people might be choosing poorly” in terms of their well-being.
Until now, most studies have focused on remote work’s impact on productivity and job satisfaction, according to an editor’s summary, while there’s been little insight into its relationship to loneliness and mental health.
To fill that gap, lead author Natalia Emanuel, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and her colleagues conducted an analysis that drew on data from five national surveys on American workers, comparing “remotable jobs” that can be done remotely, like software engineering, and “non-remotable” jobs, like surgery.
It found that the hours that workers in remotable jobs spent working alone surged by 58 percent compared to workers in non-remotable jobs. That may not be surprising, since they’re staying at home, but the level of isolation could be extreme, as there was also a 72 percent rise in their chance of spending an entire day with no human contact whatsoever.
It was even worse for remote workers who lived alone, with an 83 percent chance of spending a whole day with no human contact. “Likewise, the increase in mental distress is almost twice as large for those living alone as for those living with their family,” Epley told NPR.
Given the connection between mental and physical wellbeing, this becomes a genuine health problem, as “being alone compromises your immune system functioning, your cardiovascular system functioning,” Epley said.
Of course, the findings “don’t suggest that every office should be forcing everybody to come in to work,” Epley told NPR — something that spiteful employers are trying to find any excuse to impose on their underlings. But it’s something else to consider for anyone looking to ditch the office, and a reminder that we may need to be a little bit more deliberate about our social lives if we’re not getting our daily dose of human interaction through work.
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