Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

Bowling Alone identifies a significant decrease in civic involvement and social capital since World War II. then it seeks to explain this fall. The book is meticulously detailed an is very dense for a "popular" work. Lack of "social capital" is seen as a bad thing in part because it leads to a lack of societal trust. (The population of lawyers has risen significantly during the study time period.) People that are involved in a socially active society also tend to be happier.

The author first picked a number of measures to identify social involvement. Active church and club membership, voting and sports league participation were some of the measures. The data was analyzed to tease out relative decreases that were masked by an increasing population. Time series data was also analyzed to see the differences. (Often a single population would remain active, but a younger generation would not.) These measures generally showed a decrease, however there were some exceptions. While people were often not members of chapter-based organizations, they did often write checks to national organizations. Evangelic and proselytizing churches also showed an uptick in activity while "mainline" churches were falling.

A number of of hypotheses were chosen to explain the lack of social involvement. Some did not seem to play a significant role. (Liberal politics did not seem to cause a decrease in social capital - however, I do wonder if policies would be enacted in response to a decrease.) Newspaper readers tended to be more socially active. Television, on the other hand, was strongly correlated with decreased social involvement. Suburbanization  was also strongly correlated. People in small towns were most socially involved, while those in metropolitan areas were least involved. The suburbs were in some ways worse than the those in the central cities. The suburbs had connections to many different suburbs. They also tended to have a more homogeneous local government. 

The chain in media has caused many different changes in social activity. New telecommunications means are able to reproduce parts of the in-person communication experience, but still lack the immersion of in-person communication. They also tend to advance to a more isolated experience. TV originally had isolated people, but they could socialize later after watching the same programs. Now there are many different channels and on-demand streaming removing that common experience. The book was written in the early days of the internet. A lot has changed since then. TikTok and Zoom provide a for an audio-video experience. However, they are still lacking compared to "real" people. The lack of "general" community involvement has also led to a more polarized society as people can remotely be involved with those that think the same. Getting back our social capital would be extremely valuable, but it is hard work.