Tiffany Jenkins is a cultural historian and broadcaster. She is a former honorary fellow in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh and a former visiting fellow in the Department of Law at the London School of Economics. She wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 series “A History of Secrecy” and “Contracts of Silence.” She has appeared regularly as a critic on Saturday Review and Front Row, and her pieces have appeared in The Guardian, The Observer, the Financial Times, the Scotsman, and The Spectator.
What’s the big idea?
There is a magic to switching off from the outside world and sinking into your private space. This is a zone for restoration and uninhibited authenticity. But that historically hard-won sanctuary is harder to find than ever before. Social media and endless Zoom calls are partly to blame, but deeper cultural shifts are putting private life at risk. To protect this essential need for self-discovery, growth, and wellbeing, we need to start consciously and intentionally drawing boundaries between what is public and private.
Below, Tiffany shares five key insights from her new book, Strangers and Intimates: Rise and Fall of Private Life. Listen to the audio version—read by Tiffany herself—below, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. The public-private relationship is the most important relationship you’ve never heard of.
We’re used to thinking about major binaries that shape our world—night and day, individual and collective, work and rest, local and global. But there’s one that’s been hiding in plain sight: public and private. This is a neglected lens through which we can understand not only our daily lives but also the entire sweep of human history.
Every major social transformation, every political revolution, and every cultural shift has involved redrawing the line between what belongs in the public sphere and what remains private. Your relationship with this boundary affects everything from how you behave on social media to what you’re willing to share with your government; from how you raise your children to how you express your sexuality—even what sexuality you can be.
Yet most of us have never consciously thought about where these lines are drawn. If you’re not conscious of how this boundary works, someone else is drawing those lines for you.
2. Private life isn’t natural.
The privacy you cherish isn’t some timeless human right; it’s a recent cultural invention. Throughout history, what people chose to keep private versus what they made public has shifted dramatically.
Take ancient Rome. While we mostly keep toilet habits private today, Romans had elaborately decorated public latrines where people sat side by side and chatted while doing their business. Meanwhile, sexual attitudes were surprisingly open. Prostitution was legal and widespread, and pornographic paintings hung in respectable upper-class homes.
Whereas in England in the 18th century, all sex outside heterosexual marriage was illegal. Spying on your neighbor’s immoral behavior through a peephole was encouraged, and wrongdoers were publicly shamed in the marketplace. What we’d call a massive privacy violation today was once considered a civic duty.
It wasn’t until 1890 that the concept of privacy emerged in its modern sense. That’s when the buttoned-up Boston lawyers Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis published their famous article, “The Right to Privacy,” which first recognized the idea of a private sphere as essential to the self. Their groundbreaking argument laid the legal and philosophical basis for modern privacy rights.
“What we’d call a massive privacy violation today was once considered a civic duty.”
Private life has been everything from “forbidden, frightening and dangerous” to a “sacred refuge.” The fact that it is a cultural construction rather than a natural law means two things: we can’t take it for granted, and we have the power to shape what privacy looks like in the future.
3. We’re treating strangers like intimates and intimates like strangers.
A disturbing paradox of modern life is that we bare our souls to strangers on social media while struggling to be fully intimate with those closest to us. Today’s culture demands that we “bring our authentic selves to work” and share our politics, pain, personal struggles, and intimate moments (such as the birth of our children and marriage proposals) with everyone.
We’ve lost the seclusion essential to building ourselves and our relationships. When everything is public, nothing feels sacred. We’ve lost the exclusive knowledge shared only with the chosen few, the secrets that create bonds, the sanctuary of unconditional love that exists only between intimates.
Consider how this plays out: We’ll share our deepest struggles on Instagram Stories but can’t have an honest conversation with our partner about money. We’ll livestream our workout routines and meal prep, but feel awkward being seen without makeup by our closest friends. We know the political opinions of acquaintances, but we often don’t know what keeps our siblings awake at night.
Our leaders and tech giants have bought into and promoted this confusion. As Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt said in 2009, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” That logic essentially argues that privacy itself is suspicious.
4. Everyone desperately needs a private life.
A private life is essential. We all need it to develop our inner life, think original thoughts, and relieve the pressures of public performance. When you’re constantly “on,” there’s no space for the deep reflection that produces genuine insights or personal growth.
Also, we need privacy to be truly intimate with loved ones. Real intimacy requires a protected space where vulnerability is safe, where you can be completely yourself without an audience, and where the bonds you form are exclusive.
“When you’re constantly “on,” there’s no space for deep reflection.”
And lastly, you need a private life to be a better person in public. Think about how you feel after a holiday or weekend away, going back into the world on Monday morning. You’re fresher, restored, and more eager to engage. That’s the restorative power of stepping away from public demands and reconnecting with ourselves.
5. What you can do to reclaim your private life.
History shows that privacy panics are often overstated. We’ve survived moral crusades and surveillance scares before. But that also doesn’t mean we should sit back and do nothing.
Start by accepting that you are a different person in private than in public. Privacy isn’t just about hiding bad things. The most meaningful parts of life often happen away from public view.
Draw clear boundaries: between work and home, between colleagues and friends, between strangers and intimates. Just because strangers can’t see what you’re up to doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. The hidden moments are often where the most significant growth, connection, and restoration happen.
Enjoy our full library of Book Bites—read by the authors!—in the Next Big Idea App:
