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S<\/span>ince the clocks changed, a damp, dark blanket settles over York from about 5pm \u2013 and it\u2019s brilliant; the perfect excuse to stay in. I love every quiet corner of home: my armchair, angled for a perfect view of bird goings-on and bleak skies outside; my marshmallowy bed; the sofa, stacked with blankets; the kitchen (I don\u2019t cook, but it\u2019s where snacks live). What could be nicer than sinking into the stifling embrace of multiple heated throws as a jacket potato crisps up in the oven and I succumb to a smorgasbord of good winter telly? Why would I ever move?<\/p>\n Me and everyone else. Right? We\u2019re sleepmaxxing and soup-making in our slippers, sparking up fairy lights and enthusiastically appropriating hygge<\/em> and gezellig<\/em> (Dutch for cosy). We\u2019re sharing memes on the thrill of someone else cancelling social plans before we\u2019re forced to and proclaiming our Jomo. It\u2019s natural to retreat in winter: we\u2019re animals. But it\u2019s not just a seasonal phenomenon now, and I\u2019m conscious I need, and maybe you also need, to get a grip and go out.<\/p>\n Staying in got too easy. We can get food \u2013 anything we want, actually \u2013 delivered; we can exercise and socialise. We can amuse ourselves, endlessly, indoors: smartphones and streaming mean kids today will never know the crushing tedium of 1980s Sunday nights, funereally soundtracked by Harry Secombe\u2019s baritone. Home \u2013 if we\u2019re lucky \u2013 feels like a haven, a feeling compounded by Covid (which reframed staying there as a civic virtue) and even if we\u2019re not lucky, it\u2019s cheaper, during a cost-of-living crisis. But as the urban policy specialist Diana Lind wrote in the Washington Post in August, \u201cThe cheapest and easiest option \u2013 staying in \u2013 is costing us something else.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Not going out is bad for us for selfish reasons: social isolation increases our mortality risk.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Posed by model; Nastasic\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Describing this \u201cquiet descent into hermitage\u201d, Lind set out statistics, symptoms of a global \u201cGreat Retreat\u201d: Americans spend 99 more minutes on average at home per day than they did in 2003 (124 minutes for 15-24-year-olds); only 30% spend time socialising and communicating in an average day, down from 38% in 2014. Young people in the UK, Australia and South Korea are socialising less, too. But everyone\u2019s doing it: I was recently chilled to read, in the American writer Laura Fenton\u2019s newsletter, how an affluent homeowner she had interviewed explained they had filled their garden with fun stuff: \u201cSo the kids don\u2019t have to go down the street to the park to go throw a ball around or play.\u201d<\/p>\n Not going out is bad for us for selfish reasons: social isolation increases our mortality risk (meta-analysis in 2010 estimated lacking social connection is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day). It\u2019s also bad in less concrete ways, I think. As academic Mark Dunkelman explained to the Atlantic earlier this year, the Great Retreat doesn\u2019t stop us seeing our intimates, or connecting digitally, but it means we\u2019re less exposed to the \u201cmiddle circle\u201d \u2013 acquaintances, neighbours, fellow citizens. That means we experience less complexity, challenge and conflict; we have fewer surprises; our corners don\u2019t get rubbed off by contact with life beyond the living room. Speaking for myself, I know frictionless hygge makes me boring.<\/p>\n It\u2019s bad for communities, too, because it stops us seeing, perhaps even caring, what\u2019s going on. If you don\u2019t take your kids to the park, a broken swing is an abstract problem and it\u2019s hard to muster much indignation when libraries or swimming pools you don\u2019t use get closed down; public authorities can respond to protests about closed or degraded facilities by simply saying demand isn\u2019t there. So the cycle deepens \u2013 amenities get worse, communities weaken, making us even more inclined to stay home.<\/p>\n I\u2019m really talking to myself here, in my elastic-waisted inertia. But if you also need inspiration to rejoin the world, I get mine from looking at what other people are doing out there. I\u2019m excited by collective digital switch-off sessions and silly events like Germans gathering in parks to eat pudding with forks, or performative male contests. There\u2019s a touching expansion in anti-loneliness initiatives getting people together outdoors, reading, crafting, or just hanging out. Plus, every time I do drag my carcass out, I\u2019m chasteningly reminded how astonishing the big, beautiful, imperfect world beyond my curtains is. Because that\u2019s the thing about Jomo; it still means missing out.<\/p>\n Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n