Designing for Loneliness

The Disappearance of the Dining Room

I sat around our dining room table last night — in our actual dining room — with my wife, my two girls and my mom and dad who were in town for my daughter Eva’s high school graduation this weekend. We cooked together. We at together. We told stories. We passed serving bowls and jokes and advice and laughter. Later that evening, a Greenwood foreign exchange student and his mother visiting from Mexico for high school graduation joined us. She brought a gift bottle of tequila and flowers. We talked some more, we shared, we asked questions, we talked about anxieties, we connected. It was one of those rare nights that felt closer to a Norman Rockwell painting than a modern Saturday night (and we didn’t even open the Tequila gift).

But here’s the thing: we actually have a dining room. Most people don’t — and I’m beginning to think that matters more than I’d ever realized. Today, only about 25% of new homes are being designed with a formal dining room. In most new apartments, there isn’t even a space to pretend one exists. We’re stuck on open floor plans, building kitchens that flow into living rooms and tossing bar stools at an island, hoping that three feet of marble countertop will substitute for a communal table.

The reality? Most meals are now eaten solo—on couches, in cars, or on the edge of a bed in a studio apartment. According to the Food Research Institute, nearly half of all meals are now eaten alone. That’s not just a statistic. That’s a warning sign. That’s a symptom. And its really quite sad.

One author, M. Nolan Gray, writing for The Atlantic, recently suggested that by removing dining rooms from our floor plans, we’re not just optimizing space—we’re designing for loneliness. Think about that: in our rush to embrace minimalism, convenience, and open concept living, we may have unknowingly edited out one of the last reliable locations to carry out a ritual of human connection – the dining room.

The dining room was never just about eating. It was about “being” — together. It was about pausing the chaos of the day long enough to look someone in the eye. To ask, “How was your day?” and actually listen (or sometimes just pretend to). To hash out big family debates or just figure out who forgot to buy milk. It was the one room where generations mixed, stories were passed down, manners were taught, and phones were often (mercifully) absent.

Growing up in Florissant, Missouri, my mom taught school. My dad was an electrician and rose early and napped after work. I played football after school. But no matter what, more often than not, our family of four connected almost every night around the dining room table in four vinyl swivel chairs. Many meals were shared with my grandparents, my aunts, uncles and cousins at our home and theirs - we all had dining rooms. The dining room was a place where you didn’t get up until everyone was done eating and you asked “may I be excused” before getting back to whatever came next.

But you can’t blame the death of the dining room just on open concept kitchens. The unraveling started decades earlier. In 1953, Swanson introduced the first TV dinner, marketed as a revolutionary convenience. Packaged in aluminum trays covered in shiny, smooth aluminum foil and designed to be heated in a conventional oven and eaten in front of the television, these meals came with a built-in cultural shift.

That same year, TV tray tables started appearing in living rooms across America. Advertised as modern and efficient, these collapsible tables allowed families to scatter across the house, each person watching their own show, eating their own meal, having their own separate experience. In my home, we had a TV table holder in our basement ready to deliver four foldable TV tables so the entire family could eat together on the couch. I can’t remember ever using more than two at a time. Seems a little depressing looking back now.

Not long after came the next major shift: the microwave. I remember the first one I ever saw. My grandma — we called her Nana — got one when I was a kid. It was called a “Radar Range”. It had a round plastic dial that set the cook time. The name alone made it sound like something from a sci-fi movie. I can still picture myself standing in front of it, listing to it loudly whir, watching that massive miracle box warm up cold McDonald's French fries or melt cheese on a ham sandwich. Combine that with a Banquet frozen fried chicken TV dinner consisting of unrecognizable chicken parts, and who really needed connection anymore? The stove got a little dustier. The table, a little lonelier.

The microwave was brilliant. Fast. Convenient. But it also reinforced a growing habit of solo dining and individual portions. Meals stopped being about preparation and presentation. They became about speed and survival. Why stand around a hot oven waiting on a roast when you could zap something in two minutes flat and be back on the couch before the commercials ended? Why go to the store and shop for ingredients? Why expend the effort and force yourself to clean up pots and pans? Just use the microwave.

The ad campaigns for all these “convenience items” promised ease and comfort, but what they also delivered was the beginning of the end of the shared meal in the dining room. The idea of everyone gathering in one place to eat and connect inescapably gave way to individualized, isolated consumption. These things were efficient. They were novel. And they chipped away at the idea of dinner as a communal ritual.

Now, in an age where isolation is quietly becoming epidemic, it’s worth asking: what have we lost in the process? One particularly alarming trend is among men: most adult males report having only one close friend, and many say they have none at all. A 2021 American Perspectives Survey by the Survey Center on American Life found: Only 27% of men said they had six or more close friends, compared to 55% in 1990; 15% of men reported having no close friends at all—a fivefold increase since 1990; Many men say they have only one close friend, often their romantic partner.

Of course, correlation does not equal causation. The decline of the dining room didn’t single-handedly create these problems. The rise of digital communication, the collapse of third spaces like churches and civic clubs, longer work hours, and even the COVID-19 pandemic all played major roles. But it’s hard to ignore how many of these forces conspired to pull us apart—and how few new rituals or spaces we’ve built to pull us back together.

We’re starting to see the consequences. Rates of loneliness, especially among young people and the elderly, are at historic highs. The U.S. Surgeon General recently declared loneliness a public health crisis, linking it to everything from depression to heart disease. Connection is not a luxury—it’s a biological need. According to a 2023 report from the U.S. Surgeon General, about half of U.S. adults report experiencing measurable levels of loneliness. Loneliness is associated with a 29% increased risk of heart disease, a 32% increased risk of stroke, and significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety.

Maybe it’s time to rethink our homes. But even more importantly, maybe it’s time to rethink our habits. Because here’s what I know: that night around the table with my parents, with friends, with food and laughter and eye contact—that was good stuff. That’s the kind of moment we remember. Not the Netflix show we watched while absentmindedly eating takeout or potato chips. Not doom scrolling on our iPhones while dinner sat beside us. The table brought us together. And it made us stay.

So whether you have a dining room or just a modest corner of a tiny apartment, maybe the most radical thing you can do these days is this: set the table. Invite someone to sit. Share a meal, a thought, a story. Don’t design for loneliness. Design—and live—for connection.

And that’s the news from the field.