Here’s to hanging out with friends, a splendidly pointless pastime we’re at risk of losing | Martha Gill

The social pressure to go out is off, but has it been replaced by scrolling alone in our bedrooms?

We spend more time online. We socialise less. Our mental health is getting worse. These three trends have been obvious for some time - particularly among the young - but now more evidence is linking them, and alarm bells are sounding louder. This is a crisis, and we will need to solve it. What, exactly, has happened to hanging out?

Much has been written on the idea that hanging out has been displaced: glued to our phones, some social needs thereby fulfilled, we have less time to see our friends in real life. But this misses, I think, a parallel cultural shift. Hanging out has not just been displaced but devalued. We think it less important, less prestigious. This is profoundly odd, for a social animal, but we seem to have entered an era in which real-life socialising has dropped sharply in status. It has lost its social cachet.