An in-depth longread by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.
This solitude epidemic is not the same as loneliness. Despite public statements to the contrary, we’re not in the middle of a loneliness epidemic. We’re just choosing to be alone, Thompson notes:
… compared with 2003, Americans are more likely to take meetings from home, to shop from home, to be entertained at home, to eat at home, and even to worship at home. Practically the entire economy has reoriented itself to allow Americans to stay within their four walls. This phenomenon cannot be reduced to remote work. It is something far more totalizing—something more like “remote life.”
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the cardinal rule of contemporary apartment design is that every room is built to accommodate maximal screen time.
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Despite a consumer economy that seems optimized for introverted behavior, we would have happier days, years, and lives if we resisted the undertow of the convenience curse—if we talked with more strangers, belonged to more groups, and left the house for more activities.
Social media and other screen time means we’re never truly alone, which is part of the problem. We don’t get time to recharge.
But Thompson ends on a hopeful note. He quotes political scientist Robert D. Putnam, author of the seminal 2000 book Bowling Alone:
” I have a view that is uncommon among social scientists, which is that moral revolutions are real and they change our culture," Robert Putnam told me. In the early 20th century, a group of liberal Christians, including the pastor Walter Rauschenbusch, urged other Christians to expand their faith from a narrow concern for personal salvation to a public concern for justice. Their movement, which became known as the Social Gospel, was instrumental in passing major political reforms, such as the abolition of child labor. It also encouraged a more communitarian approach to American life, which manifested in an array of entirely secular congregations that met in union halls and community centers and dining rooms. All of this came out of a particular alchemy of writing and thinking and organizing. No one can say precisely how to change a nation’s moral-emotional atmosphere, but what’s certain is that atmospheres do change. Our smallest actions create norms. Our norms create values. Our values drive behavior. And our behaviors cascade.
The anti-social century is the result of one such cascade, of chosen solitude, accelerated by digital-world progress and physical-world regress. But if one cascade brought us into an anti-social century, another can bring about a social century. New norms are possible; they’re being created all the time. Independent bookstores are booming–the American Booksellers Association has reported more than 50 percent growth since 2009–and in cities such as New York City and Washington, D.C., many of them have become miniature theaters, with regular standing-room-only crowds gathered for author readings. More districts and states are banning smartphones in schools, a national experiment that could, optimistically, improve children’s focus and their physical-world relationships. In the past few years, board-game cafés have flowered across the country, and their business is expected to nearly double by 2030. These cafés buck an 80-year trend. Instead of turning a previously social form of entertainment into a private one, they turn a living-room pastime into a destination activity. As sweeping as the social revolution I’ve described might seem, it’s built from the ground up by institutions and decisions that are profoundly within our control: as humble as a café, as small as a new phone locker at school.
Since last year, I have been making more of an effort to get out into the community, in my own introverted, nerdy socially maladroit way. I’ve joined the Masons and rejoined the board of the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club. Also, inspired by this whimsical Tumblr post, I’ve started a personal calendar of local community events that it might be fun to go to. All of this is a start.
