When French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville published in 1835 his enduring analysis of American society, “Democracy in America,” our nation was not quite 50 years. Tocqueville’s outsider’s —and at times critical — take on a society that he viewed fondly remains a go-to text for Americans who are interested in self-analysis. One of his best-known conclusions was that Americans were unusually given to developing voluntary associations:
Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. … Americans use associations to give fetes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate.
But 160 years later, author Robert Putnam was the first in a long line of modern writers and academics to question whether Americans had lost their spirit of community. In 1995, he penned the essay, “Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital.” He developed it into a book in 2000 — one that had an extraordinary impact on discussions about post-war American society. Putnam’s writing and later work as a Harvard professor drew heavily on Tocqueville.
Putnam’s stark conclusion: “For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago — silently, without warning — that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century.”
As he emphasized in his book’s update, this trend started long before the internet: “Voting, giving, trusting, meeting, visiting, and so on had all begun to decline while Bill Gates was still in grade school.” Americans are now “alone together,” he concluded. It’s hard to miss the significance of that latter point. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, my family knew all of our neighbors. My wife and I likewise knew our neighbors in our early married life — and we remember neighbors greeting us with cookies and pies when we moved into some of our homes.
We raised our kids on a street where block parties were common. Over the last few moves, however, we’ve noticed that people mainly scurry into their garages without even a friendly wave. This could be the luck of the draw, but I’ve heard too many similar stories to think that these experiences are unusual. Likewise, when I go to stores, people largely mind their own business and the conversations with workers are more robotic than authentic. Americans often are crammed together with others in endless crowds, yet we often feel alone.
One of the key data points that Putnam emphasizes: the dramatic decline in church attendance, even among people who express religious faith. When “Bowling Alone” hit the store shelves (back when there were book stores!), a relatively low 42% of Americans attended regular religious services. That number has now plummeted to 30%. It’s a measly 22% among young adults.
Putnam noted that “regular church attendees reported talking with 40% more people in the course of the day.” That rings true. I know many of the people with whom I interact outside of work from church. A key value of church relationships is they generate interactions with people from different walks of life. I get together with congregants who are attorneys, retirees, delivery drivers, construction workers.
Outside of church attendance, measuring people’s involvement in community life isn’t always the easiest and there’s some contradictory evidence, but a recent Pew Research Center report found that only 9% of Americans are actively engaged in civic activities. By contrast, a report from 1990-91 found that 82% of Americans belonged to at least one civic association.
This apparent decline in interconnectedness and increase in loneliness has sparked a variety of hot takes from people across the political spectrum. On the Right, traditionalists bemoan the lack of cultural commonalities that were standard fare in the 1950s and 1960s: house parties, neighborhood Christmas caroling, church potlucks. On the Left, many urbanists idealize a world of neighborhood shops and want to remake our land-use regimens. They argue that post-war suburbanization and car dependence are the culprits. They present a bleak picture of modern isolation and call for a vast remaking of our built environment, one that prioritizes urban density and transit use.
Yet most of these contentions are based in part on an idealized vision of past communities. There’s no reason suburban communities necessarily destroy relationships. In his 2024 Free Cities Center article, “An ode to the suburbs,” Indiana-based economics instructor Andrew Smith explained that, “The residential nature of a neighborhood allows families to forge very close bonds, and the relative safety enables children to ride their bikes and adults to take walks in relative peace, quiet and safety, while still being able to get to nearby shopping, work and schools …. As a result, suburbs become the preference when families have children.”
Certainly, car-centeredness does make it tough for young people, non-drivers and the elderly to go places and interact with one another. Perhaps Smith glosses over that fact. But I have lived in dense urban neighborhoods and have found them to be the least-friendly places I’ve ever lived. It’s anecdotal, but my theory: In high-density apartments, people crave private space, so the last thing they want is to chat it up with people living in such close proximity. Urban neighborhoods also are transient, which makes it harder to form deep bonds. I’ve depended on transit before, yet have never found bus-riding conducive to interesting conversations.
Although Putnam is right that these trends started before the internet, it’s likely true that social media and online interactions made it far easier for people to spend their days looking at a screen rather than at one another. An optimist would say Americans are satisfying this basic need for community in modern ways. We seek out like-minded people in online communities. We connect with other people who share our interests and are not bound by geography. Now we can find them without having to rely solely on relationships with our neighbors, coworkers and other locals.
A pessimist would argue that chat groups with strangers cannot replace in-person togetherness — and that this gravitation toward online communities has promoted political extremism and distorted Americans’ ability to interact with one another in natural ways. Critics of social media point to, say, an epidemic of depression and mental illness — especially for young people who desperately need to develop social skills. Both outlooks can be true at once, of course.
Another interesting observation: The COVID-19 shutdowns might have sparked a permanent change in Americans’ willingness to interact with one another. In an Atlantic article from last year, Derek Thompson argues that, “Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities, our politics, and even our relationship to reality.” That’s a point worth pondering. I’ve noticed that since the pandemic I’ve gotten more accustomed to staying at home — although that can in part be explained by my advancing age. It also can be counteracted with some effort.
Still, it seems wrongheaded to wallow in gloom. Every declining trend that these social critics detail — fewer people hanging out together at bars, less neighborliness, a decline in church attendance, a drop in the number of sports leagues — are not only reversible from a societal level but are easily reversible for individuals. If you want to drink beer with friends at a bar, call some friends and meet them at a bar. If you want to associate with people at church, start attending church. If you want to have a house party, buy some snacks and invite people over.
One under-discussed and potential part of the problem is the vast expansion of government. Tocqueville also foresaw this situation. He reported that many of his political contemporaries “claim that as the citizens become weaker and more helpless, the government must become proportionately more skillful and active, so that society should do what is no longer possible for individuals.” As our government has become more activist, average Americans feel less inclined to form private associations (charitable, religious, cultural and political) to exact societal change. They outsource this work to politicians and bureaucrats.
Perhaps Americans just need to rely less on their governments and more on themselves and their neighbors. They need to develop new habits or, actually, just rediscover old ones. In the process, they might just naturally become closer to each other. The strongest bonds that I’ve built were formed by laboring in some shared purpose — whether it’s building a new business concept, running my kids’ soccer team, helping a friend rebuild his deck, or organizing a banquet to raise funds for a charity.
“If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads,” Tocqueville added. The answer to our atrophied system of interactions — and to our increasing sense of helplessness regarding the state of our democratic society — is practice. If we want to re-energize that loss sense of community, we just need to start using the tools at our disposal.
Steven Greenhut is director of the Pacific Research Institute’s Free Cities Center.