Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says

From the Washington Post courtesy of AlterNet:

Whereas nearly three-quarters of people in 1985 reported they had a friend in whom they could confide, only half in 2004 said they could count on such support. The number of people who said they counted a neighbor as a confidant dropped by more than half, from about 19 percent to about 8 percent.

The results, being published today in the American Sociological Review, took researchers by surprise because they had not expected to see such a steep decline in close social ties.

Smith-Lovin said increased professional responsibilities, including working two or more jobs to make ends meet, and long commutes leave many people too exhausted to seek social -- as well as family -- connections: "Maybe sitting around watching 'Desperate Housewives' . . . is what counts for family interaction."

Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard and the author of "Bowling Alone," a book about increasing social isolation in the United States, said the new study supports what he has been saying for years to skeptical audiences in the academy.

"For most of the 20th century, Americans were becoming more connected with family and friends, and there was more giving of blood and money, and all of those trend lines turn sharply in the middle '60s and have gone in the other direction ever since," he said.

Americans go on 60 percent fewer picnics today and families eat dinner together 40 percent less often compared with 1965, he said. They are less likely to meet at clubs or go bowling in groups. Putnam has estimated that every 10-minute increase in commutes makes it 10 percent less likely that people will establish and maintain close social ties.

Television is a big part of the problem, he contends. Whereas 5 percent of U.S. households in 1950 owned television sets, 95 percent did a decade later.

Click here for the rest.

Well, I'd agree that television and the internet, new technology in general, have, at least, something to do with this. But why the hell are people so willing to let their electronic devices crowd out much needed human interaction? And that's not even what this study is about, really; people are interacting with each other. The problem appears to be that people don't trust each other enough to make real emotional bonds among themselves.

While "experts" continue to offer deficient analysis about this depressing trend, the above noted television explanation being one example, I think the true instigator of American social isolation is right-wing philosophy. That is, for over a quarter of a century, the right wing has pushed every-man-for-himself economic policies, which are now, by and large, the law of the land. Meanwhile, corporations have outsourced the bulk of security providing jobs, and the healthcare crisis rages unabated. The mass-produced corporate popular culture has only reinforced these phenomena, labeling American culture as competitive, asserting that if you're not number one, you're nothing; this is now the conventional wisdom. No really, I'm not making this shit up. Conservative policy and philosophy, now triumphant, have scared the hell out of everyone, making people think that they are utterly on their own. Is it any wonder that people are feeling isolated?

What conservatives refuse to realize or admit is that there are profound real-world cultural consequences to their actions. You simply cannot have a society based on the principle of individual competition without people coming to see everybody as potential competition. Christ, throw in another conservative favorite, "zero tolerance" or "get tough on" policies, and the philosophical attack is utterly devastating: black-and-white and all-or-nothing thinking is the spirit of our era. Ever seen an episode of Cheaters? Once upon a time there was a sense of "we're all in this together" in this country--granted, I'm talking about white people in the 50s, but you get my drift. Today, we're all against each other.

And that's a pretty damned lonely place to be.

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