You go for the dog. You stay for the people.
That is how Kevin B. Johnson, a pediatrician and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, described in The Conversation what he found at his local off-leash park in Wayne, Pennsylvania. He goes most afternoons. So do the same 15 or 20 regulars. One Tuesday, tangled in someone else’s very long leash, he stopped talking and just listened and something clicked.
The dog park, he realized, does the job a corner bar used to do.
The “Third Place” We Have Been Missing
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg had a name for spots like this. He called them third places, public spaces that host regular, voluntary, informal gatherings of people outside home and work. Think neighborhood pubs, general stores, main streets, the old drugstore soda fountain. Oldenburg noted that these kinds of places have been disappearing for decades.
Dog parks have been filling some of that gap. They have been among the fastest-growing amenities in U.S. city park systems for twenty years. A study published in the Journal of Urban Affairs found that dog park users reported higher social capital and stronger neighborhood ties.
What makes them work is the mix. Regulars at Johnson’s park may share a taste in dog breeds, but they are not colleagues, political allies, or relatives. They differ in age, income, religion, and values. They are together because their dogs need to run in a field, and there happens to be one nearby.
Why Bumping Into People You Disagree With Actually Helps
Johnson points to a large body of research on what happens when people from different backgrounds spend casual time together. Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp analyzed 515 studies and found that contact between groups generally reduces prejudice. More importantly, they found the effect works less by teaching facts about the other side and more by reducing anxiety, increasing empathy, and building perspective.
Johnson saw this play out in his own park. There is a man there he disagrees with on almost everything. But everything else, Johnson says, is now less relevant about the man: behind his dog’s bad hip, his sense of humor, a rough year he went through, and his love of what Philadelphians call “wooder ice.”
That shift from opinions to a whole person is something a social media feed simply cannot replicate.
What Social Media Takes Away
Johnson describes our heavy use of social media as a kind of deficiency disease. It is not something harmful we are taking in. It is something our lives online have stopped us from getting enough of: namely, low-stakes, face-to-face contact with people who are different from us.
He compares social platforms to sorting mechanisms that group people by interests, identities, and grievances, then make it comfortable to stay there. Repeated research has linked this kind of algorithmic curation to increased anxiety. Meanwhile, repeated in-person contact at a dog park, a knitting club, or a Saturday pickleball group builds tolerance and trust over time. People notice when a regular is absent. They share attention around a place or an animal, not around defending a position.
Johnson’s prescription is simple. Deficiency diseases, he writes, are easily treatable. Nothing has to be taken away. Something just has to be given back.
Your dog already knows where to go. Maybe it is time to follow their lead.
