The Search for Sanctuary
Americans are more anxious than ever. We can blame our digital screens – or we can make them our avenue to finding sanctuary.
Illustration by Jamie Jones Animations by Device
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interactive
building sanctuary | question 1 of 3
As you answer these questions, you’re designing your personal sanctuary.
In what space do you feel most safe, comfortable, and secure?
- Kitchen
- Family Room
- Backyard
The sound of a loud thud startled Clair Jones, interrupting a quiet December night in her ground-floor Salt Lake City apartment. Something had hit the sliding glass door in her living room. Another thud, and her mind started racing. Was someone breaking in? When it happened a third time, she started yelling at the door: “I have a gun, and I’ll use it!” What she heard next was the sound of children crying—the ones who had been throwing snowballs at her door and thought she was going to shoot them.
Most of us have had such moments—a sense of alarm or unease that turns out to be baseless. Sometimes we worry more when we’re away from our homes and unable to control what’s happening while we’re gone. Henrique Canarim and his husband wonder what’s happening in their dream house in Falls Church, Virginia, and what their pets are up to all day. Andrew and Erica Rothstein of Westchester, New York, worry about leaving their young children with a nanny. Others worry about bikes being stolen from their garages or contractors rifling through drawers.
We live in a time when people expect the worst. It’s irrational in many cases—statistics say the U.S. is as secure as it has ever been, with crime rates at a 50-year low. So how could we have become the most anxious nation in the world?
The problem is a difference between perception and reality. We sense danger everywhere, even when it isn’t there. Seeing it on our TVs, tablets, and phones makes it feel like it’s all around us, even when it’s on the other side of the world.
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insight
The U.S., now the world's most anxious country, is as safe as ever.
According to the latest WHO World Mental Health Survey, 31.6% of Americans suffer from one or more forms of anxiety, a higher percentage than any other nation. Researchers say the gap between actual and perceived crime rates is one of the reasons.
Violent crimes per 1,000 persons ages 12 and older
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
Estimated lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorders
Source: WHO World Mental Health (WMH) surveys
ARE WE GOING CRAZY?
It’s natural for Clair to feel a slight fright at an unknown noise. The “what’s that!?” reflex is a survival instinct inherited from our earliest ancestors that has stayed with us because it proved adaptive. It’s normal for Henrique to worry about his home, for example—he took years to find it, and he thinks of it as his most valuable possession. In 2016, though, the natural fear response that once protected us is also contributing to a sense of pervasive unease, prompted by a constant stream of stories coming at us 24/7 through cable news, text messages, social media and more, all on our digital devices.
Every day, we spend an average of 10+ hours—almost half our waking lives—multitasking on various screens. That would be fine if our brains could keep up with it all, but evolution hasn’t yet caught up with technology. According to researchers at the University of Texas, though, our brains are slow to distinguish between real threats and those we only read or hear about, so we start to feel there’s danger everywhere. That’s why more than half of Americans—and in some years, up to 70 percent—think crime rates have increased nearly every year since 1993, even though the FBI reports that crime rates have actually decreased by about 50 percent since then.
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VIDEO
in our heads | 0:23
Short takes on home, security, and peace of mind
Jeremy, 37, an advertising executive, lives with his girlfriend in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

interactive
building sanctuary | question 1 of 3
As you answer these questions, you’re designing your personal sanctuary.
In what space do you feel most safe, comfortable, and secure?
- Kitchen
- Family Room
- Backyard
Home used to be one of the few places that offered respite from the outside world, but that world is everywhere we go now, giving us a front-row seat to the world’s mayhem and misery all day long, right from the convenience of home. It even moves around the house with us, from the family-room TV to the laptop on the kitchen table to the home office. More than 90 percent of U.S. households now have at least three connected devices. A study last year found that 71 percent of smartphone owners take them to bed with them.
Having all of these screens in our homes also encourages many of us to live more isolated lives than ever before. Forty years ago, a third of U.S. adults reported hanging out with their neighbors at least twice a week. Today, that number has dropped to 20 percent, and a third of adults say they have never interacted with their neighbors at all. A third of adults don’t even know their neighbors’ names. That’s an anxiety-producer, since just being among friends and loved ones is known to have a dramatic calming effect.
The solution is clear: We need to escape the noise of modern life from time to time—and that needs to start at home.
We need a break.f
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building sanctuary | question 2 of 3
As you answer these questions, you’re designing your personal sanctuary.
What is your favorite time of day?
- Morning
- Late Afternoon
- Night
SEEKING SANCTUARY
When Henrique and his husband need a break, they head outside to the yard, pouring all of their attention into a never-ending battle against the weeds that crop up in the grass. “We both have office jobs,” he says, “so it's nice to spend time outdoors and soak up some sun.” When Bob McGee needs a break, he prefers the old beat-up couch in his den. It looks out over his family’s backyard garden, a scene that instantly puts him at ease.
Our homes have long been the place to find this connection, writes sociologist Shelley Mallet, because they are the places where we enjoy “freedom and control, security, and scope for creativity and regeneration.” They are the places where we start and end our days and where we spend our down time, whether that’s a holiday feast with family or a quiet morning on the porch. No matter what your personal sanctuary, it all begins, as Mallet suggests, with freedom, control, and, in the largest meaning of the word, security.
People often turn to security systems in an attempt to take back a measure of control. More than 15 percent of U.S. homeowners had fitted their homes with security systems by 2010. These are a good way to deter crime. One study showed that 60 percent of burglars would pass up the chance to rob a home if they saw any sign of cameras or intrusion-detection systems. But traditional home-security systems could also be adding more anxiety than they allay.
Continue reading below ⇩
VIDEO
in our heads | 0:25
Short takes on home, security, and peace of mind
Richard, 28, the manager of a ride-sharing operation, owns a luxury condominium in Austin, Texas.

interactive
building sanctuary | question 3 of 3
As you answer these questions, you’re designing your personal sanctuary
How do you prefer spending your time?
- On your own
- With a few people
- With a big group
In 2014, U.S. fire departments responded to almost 2.5 million false alarms—a 6.4% increase from the year before. Nationwide, police departments report that 94 to 98 percent of the security alarms they have to investigate are false. Rather than quelling anxiety, these false alarms just give us more to worry about.
But here’s a question: What if, instead of letting our sense of security be driven by all these screens and false alarms, we had a single screen that tells us everything is okay? What if we actually had a way to look in on our homes while we’re away, or to look out from our homes while we’re inside? What if, rather than blaming the screen for our loss of sanctuary in our homes, we could make it the solution?
Welcome to your sanctuary, the scene you imagined for yourself whether it perfectly mimics your ideal sanctuary or just inspires you to think about the elements on your own, we hope it helps to remind you to take the break we all need.
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Want to rethink your picture of sanctuary?
In what space do you feel most safe, comfortable, and secure?
- Kitchen
- Family Room
- Backyard
What is your favorite time of day?
- Morning
- Late Afternoon
- Night
How do you prefer spending your time?
- On your own
- With a few people
- With a big group
OR, SCROLL TO CONTINUE THE STORY ↓
ALL SECURITY DEVICES ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL
Traditional systems are binary, on or off, triggered by any movement and unable to distinguish between innocuous motion and real danger. That’s a problem, because there’s a lot of meaningless movement around every home. Raccoons knock over trashcans. Trees sway in a storm. Curtains flap in the wind. A grandparent stops in when nobody’s home and doesn’t know the alarm code.
Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, neural networks, and machine learning, new technology can help cut through the noise, sorting the difference between a raccoon or a curtain and a person, sending out more selective alerts. Cameras like the indoor and outdoor monitors made by Nest are getting smarter. "It's something we'll always be chasing, getting machines to a level of human insight," says Maxime Veron, head of product at Nest, "but what we've done so far is leaps and bounds beyond any other camera."
Nest cameras are also continuously recording, making sure their owners won’t miss anything. In that sense, they become the friendly neighbor we’re missing in our more isolated lives, the one who will watch the house while you’re away or keep an eye on the kids playing in the backyard. Replacing false alarms with this smart, silent sentry—a camera designed to prompt you only when it could be important—helps put us on the road to peace of mind.
VIDEO
in our heads | 0:34
Short takes on home, security, and peace of mind
Nancy, 54, a teacher and mother of two, owns a colonial-style house with her husband in Deep River, Connecticut.

Henrique and his husband installed an indoor Nest camera so they could check on their home during the workday. What Henrique saw of his dog walker led them to find someone else. “Our dogs are just our babies,” Henrique says. “Knowing what’s going on at home gives me peace of mind.” The Rothsteins have installed several Nest cameras in their Westchester home, as a way to keep watch over their children and build trust in the nanny. The cameras put them at ease during the workday just by letting them know they can check in anytime—and, at this point, knowing they don’t have to.
If Clair Jones had had that camera, she would have known that the thud at the door was just a snowball—and saved both herself and the neighbor’s children from the unnecessary jolt of fear that has no purpose but to make us afraid more often. She could have looked at her phone, checked her outdoor camera feed, seen that everything was okay, and settled back to watching her movie in peace.
Instead of an auditorium for all the world’s fears, home can be our sanctuary again. And that transformation can start with a single screen that tells us everything is okay, shows us everything is okay, giving us the freedom to enjoy an anxiety-free day at home because we know we’re safe.
Seeing is believing. It can also be relieving.
FROM NESTCheck in on home from anywhere. Visit Nest.com to learn more.