Social Networks

There was a time – not so long ago – when if you wanted company, you had to actually turn up. At the pub, the parish hall, the youth club. You joined the darts team not because you loved darts but because that’s where people were. It was messy, human, and the glue that held communities together.

Now? That glue’s dissolving. My own Old Boys Club is the perfect example. We used to meet once a year for the AGM, swap half‑remembered stories, and then disappear for twelve months. Now we talk every day via an email chain that loops across the globe. It’s warm and constant – but it also shows how the internet replaced proximity with something far stickier: choice.

Instead of nodding at neighbours out of habit, we connect with people who share our humour, our history, or our niche obsessions – no matter where they live. These ties are deliberate, not accidental, and often feel stronger for it.

But here’s the cost: the physical clubs – the ones that forced you into the company of people who weren’t just like you – are fading. The British Legion, the working men’s club, darts night at the Dog and Duck – all quietly hollowed out by austerity and the fact you no longer have to show up in person to belong to something.

Even faith has slipped online. You don’t have to darken the church door now – just livestream the service, skip the hymns, sip tea in your dressing gown. There’s no awkward pew small talk, no stacking chairs, no congregation – just worship on demand. Convenient, yes, but what was gained in efficiency has been lost in communion.

And now, in Australia, there’s talk of banning under‑16s from the internet altogether. The logic is safety – keeping kids away from predators and toxic feeds – but it ignores a glaring truth. The internet hasn’t just given kids something to do. It’s replaced what they used to have. Youth clubs, Scouts huts, church halls – most have closed or withered, victims of budget cuts and indifference.

Switch off the Wi‑Fi without rebuilding those spaces, and where do kids go? Hanging around the Co‑op car park? Trouble finds bored teenagers faster than you can say “community initiative.” And here’s the kicker – students need the internet. It’s their library, their encyclopaedia, their way of collaborating on projects and learning things their schools don’t even teach. Cut that off, and you hobble their education as much as their social life.

Some suggest a “kids’ internet” – a safe walled garden with no predators, no scams, no bile. Lovely in theory. But who builds it? Who polices it? And how long before teenagers find a crowbar and a VPN and go looking for the real thing?

This is the point. Physical community has been dismantled in the name of efficiency. Local ties traded for curated feeds. Shared space replaced by personalised bubbles. And now, just when we realise something vital’s been lost, we talk about banning the only thing still connecting people – however imperfectly – without putting anything real back.

If we want genuine community again, we have to stop pretending it lives in servers. We have to replant it in village halls, pubs, school gyms, and scout huts. We have to make showing up matter again – not as nostalgia, but as necessity. Otherwise, we’re not heading for a safer future. We’re heading for a polite, digital loneliness – the kind that feels efficient right up until it hollows us out.