At the turn of the century, Robert Putnam published “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.” In the book, he argued that the social fabric of the United States was formed not by formal institutions but instead its looser ones: communities formed at churches, inside jokes at bowling leagues and community clubs. The book has since become a seminal text on loneliness and community in part thanks to the clarity of its message: there is no substitute for getting involved in your community.
25 years later, it’s becoming clear just how right he was (and is).
It may be a bit old hat to point it out now, but that doesn’t mean it’s incorrect: by the numbers, America is worryingly lonely. An October 2024 study published by Harvard University, researchers found that “21% of adults in the U.S. feel lonely, with many respondents feeling disconnected from friends, family, and/or the world,” and, in 2023, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy described loneliness and isolation as an “epidemic.”
Especially in the era of 24/7 news cycles, omnipresent social media and artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, it’s easier than ever to retreat into personal worlds — to get sucked into algorithmic feeds built with the intention of keeping eyes glued to screens. This may seem like a small idea — who doesn’t feel a bit disconnected now and again?
But this is deeper, and more corrosive, than feeling a bit left out of social events or a night or two spent in silence. According to Gallup polling, two decades ago 42% of U.S. adults “attended religious services every week or nearly every week”; in 2024, that figure had fallen to 30%. According to The Atlantic, “in 2023, adults were spending an additional 99 minutes at home on any given day compared to 2003.” A home developer quoted in the same piece said: “the cardinal rule of contemporary apartment design is that every room is built to accommodate maximal screen time.”
The temporary stint of national loneliness induced by the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t so temporary after all: Enghin Atalay, a Philadelphia economist and researcher, in “A Twenty-First Century of Solitude?,” said that Americans spent more time alone in 2023 than they did two years prior. In 2016, the Department of Energy found that most Americans got to work by driving alone. In just about every measurable way, American life is trending away from in-person community and towards introversion. Given all that, it reads as more or less inevitable that American social life would decline.
This has far-reaching implications, whether emotional, social, economic, cultural or democratic. Time spent speaking with friends online or getting upset with strangers is often time spent alone and hooked on instant-gratification machines. Time spent learning about international goings-on is time spent not getting involved with immediate communities.
The Internet is not without its benefits, and it makes it much easier to keep in touch with friends the world over. And it is, of course, good to be informed about the state of the world. But it is critical to dig into your local community, too: to meet people, to shake hands, to disagree and debate and bring joy to your corner of the world.
Make no mistake: this piece is not intended to chastise “the kids” in Generation Alpha and beyond, who face all manner of challenges as they hurtle into an unmapped future; nor is it aimed strictly at companies who rely upon users’ time and attention for funding. It’s about something broader than that; it’s about the importance of community, an exhausting, joyous and messy thing.
While we won’t pretend to have a solution to something this broad, it’s worth considering your relationship with your own community and how it’s shifted over the years. Do you know who lives in the apartment unit above you or in the house next door? Will your neighborhood be participating in National Night Out this August? Bowling alleys may not be quite as popular as they once were, but they’re still open. Maybe it’s worth lacing up your shoes — you might even meet a person or two along the way.