It has been five years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Recovering from it, whether on an economic, social, or psychological level, has been a slow and uneven process. Some facets of our daily lives, like sporting events and school calendars, have largely returned to their pre-pandemic traditions. But, as the chart below shows, others remain fundamentally changed. According to the Census Bureau’s “Annual Time Use Survey,” Americans continue to spend more time at home and more time alone. The trend persists across a range of activities and age groups despite falling infection rates and receding work from home policies.
While COVID certainly accelerated the trend, our antisocial tendencies have been growing for years. Twenty-five years ago, political scientist Robert D. Putnam chronicled declining rates of social intercourse in his book, Bowling Alone. He found that active involvement in community organizations fell by nearly half over 1985-1994. Among other things, Putnam pointed out that a range of technologies, including the automobile and television, had eroded our communities and social fabric.
Derek Thompson, writing in last month’s The Atlantic, offers an updated perspective. He too cites a range of statistics that underscore our tendency to pull back from community engagement. Data from reservation platform Open Table, for example, show a 29% increase in solo dining over the past two years. And evidence that we have swapped in-person experiences for “screen-time” is hard to refute. The Digital Parenthood Initiative reports that kids and teenagers are spending more than 30% of their waking life on screens of one sort or another. While generational differences exist, older adults should check their iPhones’ screen time report before they pass judgement on the youth.
The implications associated with our evolving shift toward “me-time” are both subtle and profound. On the individual level, many public health advocates, including former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murtha, claim that our self-imposed isolation is creating an “epidemic of loneliness” with serious negative health effects. While there is a great deal of evidence supporting the idea that social engagement leads to happiness, we need to be careful here. Smartphones, and the internet more broadly, allow us to stay connected to individuals and groups in ways that were not possible before. But having the most “followers” or “likes” says nothing about the nature or quality of these connections.
Thompson also suggests that social isolation may be contributing to today’s more charged political polarization. Digital media in its many forms helps us stay in touch with close friends and loved ones as well as loosely connected groups with whom we share similar interests. But online communication has its limitations. Confronting ideas that are different than your own can be a deeply uncomfortable experience. When this occurs in an online forum, it is all too easy to disengage or dismiss the perspective as irrelevant or outright wrong. The result can be worrisome, causing us to become more individualistic, at the expense of the real people behind those usernames and pixels on our screens.
In-person interactions are, well, more personal. They force us to recognize each other as humans and engage at a deeper level. Compromise, a concept integral to the democratic process, is not easily reached without the kind of deep listening and understanding that is often too hard to achieve online.
So, what is the path forward? Americans have always struggled with how much to legislate individual behavior. Perhaps public policies designed to make civic engagement easier and “bowling alone” harder are in order. Initiatives to fund development of public gathering places and banning cell phones in public schools are recent steps in this direction. But it is probably at the individual level where we can make a larger impact. What that looks like will be different for each of us, but it probably involves turning off our phones and listening more to our neighbors.
