Getting Outside is Getting Harder
Online community carried a lot of us through some hard years….
For a few years there, the answer to “how do we build community” was obvious: put it online. Virtual summits, panel webinars, Zoom happy hours, Instagram Lives and honestly, it worked. It still works. Online spaces made room for people who couldn't otherwise be in the room caregivers, women managing a health condition, women three states away, women whose schedules or budgets or social batteries just don't allow for one more evening out. That access matters, and it isn't going anywhere.
But while we were planning how to continue to build the Sipsterhood community this summer, we started asking a different question: not “should we keep the online stuff” (obviously, yes), but “what is in-person actually giving us that we've been missing?” Turns out there's real research on that…
Why Video Calls Can Wear Us Out
Researchers at Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab studied why video calls can leave people more drained than a full day of in-person meetings, even though logically they should be easier no commute, no small talk in the hallway, just log in and go.
What they found is that video calls ask more of your brain than you'd think. You're holding unnatural amounts of close-up eye contact with a grid of faces. You're watching your own reflection for long stretches, which research shows makes people more self-critical. You're seated in one spot while your brain works overtime trying to read tone and body language through a small rectangle instead of a whole room. Stanford's data also found the toll isn't distributed evenly. Women reported meaningfully higher rates of “very” to “extremely” fatigued after video calls than men did.
None of that means online community is the problem. It just means our brains process a screen differently than a shared physical space and it's worth having both.
The Gap Started Long Before Zoom
Here's the part that surprised us doing the research for this post: the shrinking of everyday, casual community didn't start with the pandemic. Online spaces stepped in to fill a gap that had already been opening for decades.
Back in 1989, sociologist Ray Oldenburg wrote about the disappearance of what he called “third places” the low-stakes spots that are neither home nor work, where community used to happen almost by accident: the front porch, the corner store, the barbershop, the bench outside church. His argument was that America had been quietly trading those spaces for private, isolated living for decades, long before anyone owned a laptop.
A couple of numbers that are hard to sit with: since 2003, the average American has picked up roughly an extra day a month spent alone, while time spent socializing in person has dropped. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General formally declared loneliness a public health epidemic, and part of the finding was that our connections have gotten more frequent but often lower in quality not that any one channel, like texting, is bad, just that it tends to carry a different, thinner kind of connection than being in a room, or on a trail, with someone.
So What Does Outside Add, Specifically?
This is the question we kept coming back to. It's not that indoor or online gatherings don't count, they do. But getting outside together seems to add something extra on top. A few reasons, backed by what researchers keep finding:
Side-by-side beats face-to-face. Walking next to someone removes the pressure of sustained eye contact. It's easier to say something real when you're not being watched while you say it.
Sunlight and movement support mood regulation in ways a screen or a conference room can't fully replicate, it's tied to measurable shifts in stress hormones and circadian rhythm.
Shared physical effort tends to build trust quickly. Moving at the same pace, breathing the same air, covering the same ground, it adds something conversation alone doesn't.
It's activity-based, not performance-based. Nobody's “on.” You're not there to present, pitch, or impress. You're there to walk.
This Isn't Either/Or Even the Experts Blend Both
GirlTrek, co-founded by Vanessa Garrison and T. Morgan Dixon, grew from two friends committing to walk 30 minutes a day into a movement of more than a million women and one of their most beloved programs, Black History Bootcamp, is an online walking podcast, paired with in-person and phone-based walking teams. Outdoor Afro, founded by Rue Mapp, runs an entire national network of guided hikes and outdoor gatherings, organized and promoted almost entirely online.
Neither organization picked a side. They used online tools to make it easy to find each other, and used the outdoors to actually build the connection once they did. That's basically our model too.
Which Is Basically Why We Outside Exists
This is part of why our summer looks a little different this year. Our newsletter, our GroupMe, our mentorship touchpoints, all of that stays. We're just adding more chances to actually be in the same place together popping up at hikes, festivals, and walks already happening around the city.
We Outside 2026 isn't about ditching what's worked. It's about making sure showing up in person doesn't quietly disappear from the mix, backed by the research, and by what we've felt every time we've done it.
Our next Sipsterhood hike is this Saturday. Come get some sun with us and if Saturday doesn't work, we'll still see you in the GroupMe.
Walk With Us — Saturday, July 11 → Register for the hike
See the Full We Outside 2026 Lineup → Check out everything happening this July
Join Our GroupMe → Get real-time updates & connect with the Sipsterhood
SOURCES
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General — “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” (2023)
Stanford News — “Four Causes for ‘Zoom Fatigue’ and Their Solutions” and “Zoom Fatigue Worse for Women” (Bailenson et al., Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab)
Northwell Health — “How Loneliness Can Worsen Your Health,” citing Pew Research and Gallup data
Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place (1989)
GirlTrek (girltrek.org) and Outdoor Afro (outdoorafro.org)
