AH, LOOK AT ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE: There were some articles in the local newspapers and the weekly news magazines recently about a study published in the June, 2006 American Sociological Review regarding friendship. Based on nationwide surveys done in 1985 and 2004, the study indicated that Americans now have fewer friends and fewer people that they can talk face-to-face with about their problems. <\/p>\n
And I thought it was just me.<\/p>\n
The poll indicated that the average number of close friends that people have declined from three to two between ’85 and ’04. Furthermore, the proportion of folk who don’t have anyone around to discuss personal stuff with went from 1 in 8 to 1 in 4. Great news for shrinks, but not for those “seeking community”. As social isolation increases, fewer people get involved with things like volunteer fire departments and the Red Cross. If you get sick or old and have to go to the hospital or a nursing home, don’t count on having many visitors. And if there’s a disaster like Hurricane Katrina in your hometown, don’t count on getting a ride if you don’t have a car, or even if you do, you may not have anyone to stay with. <\/p>\n
Alienation does have its costs. I would postulate that it contributes to the study findings showing that Americans are generally less healthy than the British and most Europeans, despite much greater spending on health care here. When one is alone a lot, food often becomes one’s solace. That would contribute to the high obesity rate here in America, which eventually contributes to many diseases (diabetes, heart problems, stroke). <\/p>\n
So how did we get here? The study authors (Laurie Thorner and Lynn Smith-Lovin) blame the fact that people work longer hours, commute longer distances to work, and also that more women forsake housewife status for careers; this makes it harder to maintain ties with neighbors and even family. They also cite technology changes, i.e. more TV viewing and computer use. <\/p>\n
I myself would agree with that, but I think there’s something more fundamental going on. I’m an economist at heart, so I think it’s tied to wealth and money. Despite all our complaints, America is the richest nation in the world. Even though wealth is getting more and more concentrated over time, most people in America have at least some discretionary income at most points in their life, and thus have a lot more opportunity to do what they want versus most anywhere else in the world. <\/p>\n
Being able to do what you want is great; I love it. You can study what you want while in college or trade school, have a career in the field of your choice, move to the part of the country that you like, take up any number of different hobbies and interests, enjoy a wide choice of music and entertainment, select from a wide range of political views and social causes and religions (or not). And then throw in the great mixture of races and ethnicities and nationalities and immigrants here in America; and the fact that they increasingly fight to maintain their identity, versus blending-in as “average Americans”.<\/p>\n
But guess what? The side-effect is that we all become one-of-a-kind. It’s hard to find anything to talk about other than the weather. Back when I was a kid, and even in college in the early 1970s, there were only three television stations to watch, and maybe four or five radio stations that were popular. You got a car from either GM or Ford or Chrysler, either a sedan, compact or mid-size. There were only so many movies to go see — at the local movie house, because video and DVD did not yet exist. Middle class life had a familiar pattern to it. Most people in my area were second or third generation Euro-ethnics. I know that this was not paradise; I agree that segregation and closed-mindedness are bad things. But it was a lot easier to relate to people around you when there was more common ground. For example, there seemed to be more civility on the roads and highways; I don’t remember all this ‘road rage’, with people willing to cut you off and run a yellow light to get to their destination 30 seconds faster. <\/p>\n
[And then there’s blogging<\/span>, of which I am also guilty. There are a million blogs out there. But how many of those does any one person find interesting? One, two, maybe three if you’re lucky?]<\/p>\n Is this really a problem, or is it just another nostalgic lament about how we lost something when we went from rags to riches? Technology and wealth make it easier to stay in touch with people from our past. We live in a mobile society today; those friends we do find are likely to move eventually. But with e-mail and telephone and cheap air-fares, it’s easier to stay in touch. If I had to answer the study survey, I’d say that I don’t have any close friends within 20 miles. But there is still a handful of people who I could talk with on a deeper level, in various parts of the country. Nevertheless, it’s extremely hard these days for me to make new friends, especially on the level of sharing one’s most important concerns and interests. Maybe it’s an aging Baby Boomer thing; maybe this survey just reflects the fact that there are more people in their 50s and 60s these days, and older people generally have a harder time making new friends. <\/p>\n I guess I’ll have to leave it to the sociologists to figure out what’s going on here. But it does help to know that I’m not the only one having a hard time “finding community” these days. I’ve heard a lot of people, especially the idealist kind, talk about community, about living in a place where people sit on porches and stop and talk on the streets and in the local stores. But now I know why they talk about community so much; because it just doesn’t exist anymore! <\/p>\n One final example: a few years back, my apartment building (a house divided up into six dwelling units) was sold. We have a porch in front, but under the old owner (who lived here), no one ever used it; the owner and his family came from Italy, and this is an extremely non-Italian neighborhood. So he pretty much discouraged anyone from hanging out on the porch, afraid perhaps of attracting “the wrong element”. The new owner is a bit younger, and seems a bit more “communitarian”. Even though he doesn’t live here, he put out a swing and a bench and table with chairs around it. For a while there, some of the tenants tried it out. But now we’ve pretty much gone back to an empty porch. We just don’t have much to talk to each other about; we all have other things to do with our spare time. You just can’t change the flow of American social trends with a swing and a few chairs and a romantic vision of the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AH, LOOK AT ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE: There were some articles in the local newspapers and the weekly news magazines recently about a study published in the June, 2006 American Sociological Review regarding friendship. Based on nationwide surveys done in 1985 and 2004, the study indicated that Americans now have fewer friends and fewer people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}