Is America suffering a ‘social recession’? | Anton Cebalo

Since the release of a chart showing that fewer people are having sex than ever before, there has been increased interest in the state of America's social health. Polling has shown a decline in all spheres of social life. Although it will take years before this is clearly established, it was almost certainly worsened by the Pandemic.

There has been a rise in mental illness and diseases of despair. Life expectancy in the US fell to where it was in 1996 according to the CDC. Life expectancy has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in western Europe. The US saw the longest decline in life expectancy since 1915-18 when the US was fighting the first world war.

A whole genre of commentary has been created by the topic. The internet is not being built with pro- social ends in mind, as many of them point out. Online life and its data have become the most sought after commodity. The attention of the everyday person is the most scarce of resources to be taken. Economic precarity and the decline of public spaces are seen as causes of our rising anomie.

The new right has adopted some of the same criticisms as well as indicting the culture for subverting traditions of sociality. Believing it disproportionately affects men, this position has produced many lifestylist spinoffs: Men Going Their Own Way, inceldom, masculinist groups and hustle culture with a focus on "beating the rat race". All of these groups are symptoms of the social recession.

We have no clear basis on which to judge what will emerge from the growing number of people who feel lost, lonely or invisible

Pundits, politicians, bureaucrats and the like tend to focus on the social recession's potential to create political extremists. The internet is being studied, monitored and surveiled because of its radicalizing tendencies. Much of this discussion has focused on the need to contain some unknown, dangerous taking hold of the dispirited online, as well as the use of the new term "scalpel terrorism", which is the act of violence indirectly motivated by messages of hate spread through mass communication. The goal is not to solve a problem but to appease it.

We don't know what to make of the growing number of people who are lost, lonely or invisible. Millions of provincial people moved to major cities in the early 20th century in order to pursue their dreams. They were poor and unfulfilled after they moved. The loneliness of I was the subject of The Sleepwalkers, an Austrian novel written in1930. In The Metamorphosis, no one cares for Samsa, and he is forced to go to work even though he doesn't know himself anymore. In The Age of Anxiety, he described the alienating product of mass industrial society.

Data and polling are useful starting points for discussing the social recession and whether it is here to stay.

Robert D Putnam's study, "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community", was praised for its breadth of research. The decline of sociability in the US since the 1950s is documented in the book.

One of the first things the book said was that the traditional American community was on the decline. In political science courses, it's a staple. Many of the metrics used in the study are decades old. Since not even bowling has been spared the decline of social activities, the title doesn't evoke relevance anymore. It was easy to see the trend as fixable in the year 2000.

Putnam worked on an assessment of social life before the internet was adopted. It's clear that that world is never going to come back. Putnam describes a decline in church membership that is mild compared to what happened after. In 1999, 70% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, but by 2020 it was already down to 45%.

Screen time is a proxy for not doing community activities in person. Americans are browsing alone over seven hours a day, on average, with the number increasing every year. More than one third of Americans claimed to be online most of the time.

The real metric to look at is the friends we have. In the past few decades, the number of friends has gone down. According to the Survey Center on American Life, 12% of Americans claim to have no friends at all. Only 2% of Americans said they didn't have any friends in the previous year. It's more common for men to be without a friend.

When we focus on generations who grew up with the internet, it looks worse. A pre-pandemic survey found that 22% have no friends and 30% have no friends at all. For those born between 1997 and 2012 (Generation Z), there has been no widespread, credible study done yet on this question, but if you are close to internet spaces, you already know that these same online catalysts are deeper for the next generation.

The late adulthood trend is common among those born from the 1990s onward. Getting a driver's license, moving out, dating, starting work, and so on are some of the traditional milestones that are delayed.

The trend started in 2010 The study was titled The Decline in Adult Activities among US Adolescents. The paper found a decline in the number of times highschoolers went out without their parents. Some of this is not bad, but it is more common than others. Delayed adulthood is associated with less of a desire to engage in risky behavior.

The decline in sociability is tracked by risk avoidance and bundled with other personal costs. There has been an increase in the number of diseases of despair in the US more generally. The decline in life expectancy was caused by these.

There has been an increase in the number of people who have had no sexual relations since they were 18. According to the writer, we are seeing a wave of sexual negativity instead of free love. The results of that event are predictable. Although popular culture often paints a picture of young people awash in app-aided sex and dating, the reality is that they are not.

Trust is missing from all of this. America has gone from a high-trust society to a low-trust society in the past 50 years. Since the 1970s, trust has fallen to an average low.

I still think another, more positive kind of online community is imaginable

According to the research, Americans think that trust has gone down. Most of the people are worried about the decline in trust in each other. A lot of people feel that they no longer recognize their own country. After Watergate and the "crisis of confidence" during the 1970s, trust in the US began to erode. Skepticism toward the state has evolved into more generalized distrust of society due to the internet.

We can sketch a new person, a growing minority in our society, from all this data. Carl Jung said that personal meaning comes when people feel like they are acting in the divine drama. Nostalgia, exaggerated hatred, and the desire to be saved are some of the things that enter our society.

The political establishment is led by people of an older generation who are socialized in a different way. The current US government has been described as a gerontocracy. More than 23% of members of Congress are over 70 years old. The new individual at the ballot box has had little effect on American political power, while at the same time chastising the public for it. Politics of the social recession have just begun.

Martin Gurri argues in his book The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium that the digital public lacks a coherent program and is motivated by a desire to tear down idols and authority. We can't expect the new person to be contained to his or her own world. It will inform beliefs on how society should be organized, whatever it is.

The process can't be easily changed. Political management can't contain these feelings. The healthier alternative involves rethinking internet infrastructure to pro-social ends, with platforms owned by the people using them.

I am not going to pretend that I know what that will look like. I still think another, more positive kind of online community is possible, even though the trends described here may be a "new normal" in the sense that they can't be reversed. There is no need for the internet to be part of a permanent social downturn.

• The author is a historian. A version of this piece was published in the Substack newsletter.