It has been a quarter century since the political scientist and Harvard professor Robert Putnam published “Bowling Alone,” a diagnosis of a nation — and a collective national identity — being torn apart at the seams. Putnam used data to show a decades-long drift away from civic institutions and tracked the decline of “social capital,” that amorphous bond of shared interests, values and goals between people.
The retreat from civic life began in the 1960s, a decade of assassinations, the Vietnam War and distrust of government, followed by the “Me Decade” of individualism in the 1970s. Just as urban and industrial movements had done a century before, subsequent suburban sprawl and lives dominated by cars also contributed to a sense of disconnection. More recently, the culprits include the 2008 economic crash, the Covid pandemic, the opioid epidemic and a profusion of low-wage, dead-end jobs in the gig economy.
Now, Putnam says, things are even worse.
“What most matters is face-to-face connection,” he said in an interview. “And that has almost certainly never been as low in American history as it is right now.”