Hyper-Cocooning in the Age of Coronavirus

The acclaimed futurist Faith Popcorn coined the term “Cocooning” to describe the idea of an individual staying inside one's home insulated from the dangers of the outside world. In her 1991 book, The Popcorn Report, Popcorn describes cocooning as "the impulse to go inside when it just gets too tough and scary outside. To pull a shell of safety around yourself, so you're not at the mercy of a mean, unpredictable world - those harassments and assaults that run the gamut from rude waiters and noise pollution to crack-crime, recession, and AIDS. Cocooning is about insulation and avoidance, peace and protection, coziness and control-a sort of hyper-nesting."