Living Apart Together
A New Family Dynamic
My family and my best friend are in Bulgaria, my boyfriend in the US and I am in the UK. And I can assure you this is definitely not a unique situation. Welcome to the LAT (Living Apart Together) club.
Many interesting trends on The Modern Family were presented at the latest Stylus Innovation Forum last week but probably the one that really resonated with me was Living Apart Together.
If you look up the term you’ll find out that this is generally referred to couples who don’t share a home together but at the Stylus Forum this idea was taken further, referring not only to couples but to families and friends living away from each other. This trend is driven by the significant increase in mobile workers who are expected to reach 1.3bn by 2015.
Love it or hate it, it seems that we’re only going to see this trend growing. It is a new family dynamic in the way in which people live and love outside the conventional family. Living alone doesn’t necessarily mean being alone but in a world where we are physically distant from the ones we care about the ways to connect with them are still limited. In many cases technology becomes the new family member trying to bridge the distance gap. I’d feel extremely homesick if it wasn’t for the regular Skype video calls with my family. Since I moved to the UK, WhatsApp has been a saviour when it comes to keeping in touch with my best friend without having to end up with a sky high phone bill! Don’t even get me started listing the apps available for long-distance relationships. There’s even a product that allows you to connect with your lover through a wristband that let’s you hear their heartbeat (aww! although a bit weird). In the near future, we could even see the concept of Global Chef coming to reality enabling friends to cook together all across the world by using laser hologram technology.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the enormous benefits of technology that enable us to get close to family, friends and loved ones but I don’t think it can ever replace actually being in the same place together. In the case of LAT, the most important thing is regular communication and sharing. Physical distance is easier to overcome when there’s emotional support.
Someone told me recently “There is no such thing as long-distance any more. Wherever two people are in the world you are divided by maximum a 12h flight. And that’s not a lot.” Sure, everyone is a global citizen today and I’d probably agree with this opinion if we were able to travel whenever we wanted without any constraints. However, the reality is different. But who knows what the future holds. Perhaps the growing LAT trend would impact the ways and regulations in which we travel. I still have my fingers crossed for teleportation…
Speaking of which, I’ll leave you with this hilarious Buzzfeed list of how long distance BFFs survive which I’m sure many of us can relate!
PS: Stylus will publish The Modern Family Macro Trend in full on May 14. They will also present a 30-minute version of the forum as a webinar at noon GMT on Friday May 30. More info here.
