You know who you know and you don’t know who you don’t know, but who you don’t know can always become who you know. I’ll stop trying to be playful with words and get at what I’m really trying to say. It may be random, but nonetheless a valid question of curiosity: why don’t a majority of people get to know strangers anymore? Even more specifically, why don’t we get to know the people who live next to us, below us, above us, or across the street from us? In other words, our neighbors.

Economist Joe Cortright wrote in a City Observatory report in 2015 that only 20 percent of Americans have spent time with their neighbors. A third of those surveyed stated that they’ve never interacted with their neighbors before. Although these statistics do not imply that these people will never spend time with or interact with their neighbors ever, but nonetheless I found these numbers shocking.

Now I get it. I’ve seen enough CSI, TLC specials, and enough of Quagmire from the show Family Guy to realize that not everyone or everything is as it seems to the naked eye... maybe creepier and weirder. Nonetheless, I also understand that everyone lives in different places with various factors that may impede or prevent them from getting to know the people in their community. However, I have friends who live in practically every suburb of Chicago and every inner part of the city of Chicago, and I can guarantee you that less than half of them have met and/or spent at least an hour with the people who live next to them. So in all seriousness, why don’t we get to know our neighbors anymore?

I recently came about asking myself this question a few times this summer and is much credited to my childhood. My family and I moved to our house in the suburbs of Chicago 13 years ago; during the first week of living in our new neighborhood my family and I got to know every person who lived next to us, behind us, across the street from us, and even a block away from us. We’ve been very good friends with most of those people since. My best friend who I’ve known since I was three years old lived four houses down from me. Seriously, a dream come true for a little kid.

We did it all, my neighbors, my family, and I. We attended each other's birthday and graduation parties, we borrowed milk or mustard from each other when we ran low, we went to each other's family funerals, helped with garage sales and lemonade stands, and had impromptu Sunday dinners together. Our next neighbor Mrs. Fischer would always give my sisters and I $5 on Easter when we were little and give us tomatoes from her garden every summer (it all sounds like an episode of a cheesy family sitcom, I know. But, bear with me). My neighbors and my family, we’ve done it all together and I’m grateful to say that my neighbors were a substantial part of my childhood.

Even television sitcoms were notorious for showcasing neighbors as being some of the biggest influences of the entire show. My favorite has to be the wise and scholarly Mr. Feeny in the ‘90s Disney sitcom Boy Meets World. Lots of love for Feeny, one of the few teachers on Disney channel who wasn’t complete dunce (if you’ve seen Disney channel these days, feel free to agree). There’s also the obnoxious and lovable Kimmy Gibbler in Full House, the one and only Steve Urkel from Family Matters, Penny from The Big Bang Theory, Wilson Wilson from Home Improvement, Barney and Betty Rubble from The Flintstones, Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld. and The Neighbor and sweater man himself, Mr. Rogers from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.

But if TV shows aren’t enough to make you want to find out who lives next to you, get this. There’s an app that helps people get to know their neighbors, request babysitters, learn about block parties, and hear about local break-ins or robberies. It’s called the “Nextdoor” app. Over 70,000 communities across the United States use the app, according to the app website, and helps your community do all of the above without actually having to interact and communicate face to face with each other...

This is where we have a problem.

What happened to actually communicating and listening to people in person and building a community through relationships not made through an app? For goodness sake, these people live right next to you. Along with the laziness that comes with technology, here are some reasons as to why I believe people don’t interact with their neighbors:

• The plain desire not to
  • Some people like to socialize, some don’t. Not everyone is interested in getting to know new people, some love it. Not everyone cares for the idea of building relationships within their community, and some crave it and advocate for it. Plain and simple.
• Technology
  • We all know why this is a reason. I don’t think I need to elaborate on the fact that we are more involved with illuminated screens and the Internet than actual reality more than ever before.
• Preconceived judgments, beliefs, ideas, or prejudices about individuals or certain groups of people
  • Prejudice, racism, xenophobia, ignorance, extreme beliefs and extreme ideas are powerful. They are created by humans and only by humans, and lead us to refrain and more often than not completely avoid from interacting with their community and realizing that stripped down to the core we are all just people. To these people who have what is described in this bullet point, I am sorry for you and your blurred mindset and absence of a moral compass.
• The environment in which we live
  • Where someone lives has a big impact on how they will interact with their community. Living in a city vs. living in the suburbs, living on a farm vs. living in the mountains, I could go on with comparisons of geographic locations. Also where you live gives you access to certain community resources, organizations, businesses, companies, all of which give people the chance to interact with others in their community.
• Privacy as a privilege
  • I list this because of what I have seen as made private in certain areas, especially suburbs. One example is gated communities. I don’t live in one, though I will say that when I pass by one they look intimidating and give you the sense that you’re not good enough to belong there. Yet, these people and I live in the same community. There’s obvious divide and an underlying sense that privacy has become an elite desire of those who can afford it.

Feel free to agree, disagree, discuss, or think about these reasons. There may be more, maybe less. But to bring it full circle... you know who you know and you don’t know who you don’t know. Take a chance to change that and see if who you don’t know can become someone that you do.