Microprocessing
We’re Leaning on Delivery Apps to Get Through This — and We May Never Stop
The trauma caused by the pandemic may force many to change their habits for good
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In Microprocessing, columnist Angela Lashbrook aims to improve your relationship with technology every week. Microprocessing goes deep on the little things that define your online life today to give you a better tomorrow.
The world you knew before the Covid-19 pandemic will not be the one you reenter once this is all over. One of the changes many of us will feel most acutely is the massive decimation of the restaurant industry.
It will come back. Here and there, restaurants that managed to stay afloat via strategic pivoting during quarantine or through the actions of responsible and proactive local governments will reemerge, welcoming a flood of hungry customers desperate for social interaction, for the community that restaurants can cultivate like few places in our society do.
But research shows that the traumatic response to disasters that are even smaller than what we’re currently experiencing can disrupt a functioning society. For example: The rise in mental illness and suicide after the Great Recession of 2008. The Covid-19 pandemic, and the mental health crisis that ensues, will dwarf that. We will all tumble from our homes in one month or two months or four months changed, hurt, and worse for wear. Many of us will struggle with the psychological fallout for years to come, as research notes is already evident in Wuhan, China, which faced the first outbreak of the virus late last year.
In the short term, and possibly even the long term, one expression of this psychological fallout will be a fear of being in crowded places, like restaurants and grocery stores, and an increasing reliance on delivery apps that bring us our food in the comfort of our homes. That change was already happening before the pandemic, but as we see the entire world population reborne anxious, depressed, and traumatized, it’s possible that for many of us, what was once a habit of twice-weekly takeout will become a dependence.
Delivery apps are already seeing a rise in business. NPD, the market research company…
