Changes in the Use of Words Like Self, Friend and Neighbor Tell a Social Story

When we were living in a low-technology world, we were forced to interact daily with others. Now that we live in a world requiring less dependency on one another, we have to create it.

For the last 20 or 30 years, we have been moving toward a world where most people's meaningful interactions were at work. Then we had the pandemic causing people to work virtually more, with large amounts of isolation.

Businesses are now creating a frictionless experience (self-checkout, for example), so we must seek friction. This is one of the things we do by committing ourselves to a third place. We say, "I'm going someplace where I'm interacting with others regularly."

We see this shift with interactions reflected in our word usage too. Google Ngram can trace the relative use of words over time in books.

Looking over the last two centuries, you see we once used the word friend twice as much as self. Now, we're using the word self twice as much as friend. This trend began in about 1918.

When comparing the words neighbor and stranger, we see that stranger used to be used three times as much. But by the 1970s, the two words were used with the same frequency. We were just as likely to use the word neighbor to describe someone as a stranger. Only in the last ten years has the word stranger jumped in use, moving ahead of neighbor.

Our use of the word neighbor is a flat line from 1800 to now.

The word human remains higher than these other words, but dog is now more frequent than either stranger or neighbor! God is used less than the word dog but slightly more than stranger. Make of that what you will.

This isn't something that happened just because of social media, the computer, or television. What we're looking at from 1800 to 2000 is the change that comes along with the enlightenment, which is a movement in society that places greater emphasis on freedom.

If you say, "Why are people so uneasy in society today?" Well, it's because we've changed things. In most respects, the quality of life is better than in 1800. For one thing, we have antibiotics. But we have also lessened our mutual dependency. Some would say we have become more inwardly focused and more selfish!

We are intensely social animals, and when we don't regularly interact with others, even if we are convinced that we are introverts and like being by ourselves, it's not good for us.

If you want to change this in your life, get out there and meet your neighbors. That is the first and easiest step you can take.