They might be available in the market for friends.
While many Americans have turn out to be accustomed to scanning their groceries while wearing headphones, this practice could also be contributing to the loneliness epidemic.
Self-checkouts account for nearly 40% of pay lanes at US grocery chains, based on Catalina Marketing.
And greater than 4 in 5 (84%) Americans report they like using self-service kiosks at stores, with 66% claiming they’d select a self-checkout lane over cashing out with a human cashier, a recent survey from PlayUSA, an internet gaming site, found.
Toni Antonucci, a professor of psychology on the University of Michigan, explained to the Los Angeles Times this week that “weak ties” — described as warm, low-stakes relationships, just like the ones between cashiers and repeat customers — are a critical tool for maintaining emotional well-being, especially later in life as social circles shrink.
“It’s any person who makes you are feeling necessary of their world,” she said. “Someone who makes you are feeling human.”
Nevertheless, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates that the variety of cashiers nationwide is predicted to shrink by 10% from 2021 to 2031 — a lack of roughly 335,000 jobs.
In 2020, Amazon unveiled its first Amazon Go Food market, which relies more on technology than human employees.
The shop uses cameras and sensors to detect the products customers pick off the shelves and emails them a receipt, allowing shoppers to pay for a bagful of groceries with none human assistance.
The concept is a bigger public version of the Amazon Go store that opened to employees in 2016.
Because the world continues to turn out to be more reliant on technology, experts are sounding the alarm about detrimental impacts on people’s physical and mental health.
The April PlayUSA poll found that greater than 7 in 10 (71%) of the 1,001 Americans surveyed said human-run checkouts take longer, while 60% admitted they simply don’t want to interact in awkward small talk.
An unsocial 14% said they’d wait in a self-service lane even when a human cashier was available.
There was a generational divide, with 84% of Gen Z and 76% of Millennials preferring technology over human interaction, compared with only 57% of Gen X and 46% of Baby Boomers.
While a staggering 89% of individuals imagine tech has made their every day lives easier and 62% like that technology is replacing face-to-face interactions, many admitted that coping with a lot technology has negatively affected mental health.
About 67% say technology has made it harder for people to make meaningful connections, 75% think tech-based interactions have led to a decrease in social skills, and 68% imagine it’s caused less empathy.
