BOWLING ALONE Page 12
Comparable estimates of a broader array of social connections (as summarized in figure 17) show that, on average, during the last quarter of the twentieth century Americans attended church services and visited with relatives nearly every other week; ate dinner out, sent a greeting card to someone, and wrote a letter to a friend or relative about once every three weeks; played cards about once a month and entertained at home just about that often; attended a club meeting about every other month and had a drink in a bar almost that often; gave or attended a dinner party, went to the movies, and attended a sporting event roughly every two or three months; worked on some community project and played some team sport roughly twice a year; and wrote a letter to the editor every other year.12
The average American in recent decades has been far from isolated civically or socially, but we seem more engaged with one another as friends (or schmoozers) than as citizens (or machers). We get together with friends about twice as often as we attend organized meetings, we hang out in bars about
Figure 16: Social and Leisure Activities of American Adults (1986–1990)
Figure 17: Frequency of Selected Formal and Informal Social Activities, 1975–1998
three times as often as we work on community projects, and we send a greeting card to a friend about thirty-five times more often than we send a letter to the editor.
Of course, hardly anyone is “average.” Some people socialize continuously and join every group in sight, whereas others are more detached. Nearly everyone is a “specialist” in some type of activity. Some of us write our parents every week, some are movie fanatics, and some attend a lot of civic-minded meetings. To take an extreme example of specialization, 1/300 of the adult population writes a letter to the editor at least once a month, but this infinitesimal group accounts for roughly 20 percent of all letters to all editors in America.13 Nevertheless, homey ways of connecting with our friends and neighbors are remarkably widespread. Despite the much hyped allure of Hollywood, for example, Americans play cards more than twice as often as we go to the movies.14 In sum, the good news is that Americans connect with one another.
The bad news is that we are doing so less and less every year. Consider some of the startling evidence of change over the last quarter century. In the mid- to late 1970s, according to the DDB Needham Life Style archive, the average American entertained friends at home about fourteen to fifteen times a year. By the late 1990s that figure had fallen to eight times per year, a decline of 45 percent in barely two decades. An entirely independent series of surveys from the Roper Social and Political Trends archive confirms that both going out to see friends and having them over to our home declined from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. (See figure 18 for details.) Yet a third archive (that of
Figure 18: Social Visiting Declines, 1975–1999
Yankelovich Partners) reports a decline of nearly one-third between 1985–86 and 1998–99 in the readiness of the average American to make new friends.15 Visits with friends are now on the social capital endangered species list. If the sharp, steady declines registered over the past quarter century were to continue at the same pace for the next quarter century, our centuries-old practice of entertaining friends at home might entirely disappear from American life in less than a generation. Of course, it would be foolhardy to predict that outcome, since many things in American life will surely change over the next twenty-five years, but the pace of decline in social visiting over the last twenty-five years has been extraordinary.
Recognizing the scheduling conflicts of two-career families, one might conjecture that this decline in reciprocal home visits and dinner parties is simply an optical illusion. Perhaps more people are dining out with friends, thus shifting the venue for their prandial encounters from the dining room to the restaurant but still making the same social capital investment. In fact, contrary to widespread impression, dining out (alone or with others) has increased very little if at all over the last several decades.16 Moreover, faced explicitly with the choice of going out with friends or getting together with them at home, Americans say they prefer staying home by more than two to one, and that stay-at-home margin is rising, not falling.17 Thus the practice of entertaining friends has not simply moved outside the home, but seems to be vanishing entirely. Informal outings, like picnics, also seem on the path to extinction. The number of picnics per capita was slashed by nearly 60 percent between 1975 and 1999.18 Americans are spending a lot less time breaking bread with friends than we did twenty or thirty years ago.
Even more startling, this same trend can be observed closer to home. As figure 19 reports, the past two decades have witnessed a dramatic change in one traditionally important form of family connectedness—the evening meal. The fraction of married Americans who say “definitely” that “our whole family usually eats dinner together” has declined by a third over the last twenty years, from about 50 percent to 34 percent.19 Conversely, the number who disagree with the proposition that “our whole family usually eats dinner together”—in other words, those for whom this is definitely not a customary practice—has increased by half (from 16 percent to 27 percent) over this same period. The ratio of families who customarily dine together to those who customarily dine apart has dropped from more than three to one in 1977–78 to half that in 1998–99. In fact, striking as these data are, they understate the real change in American dining customs, since they refer only to the behavior of married couples, whereas the proportion of adults living (and therefore presumably dining) alone has roughly doubled during this period.20 Since the evening meal has been a communal experience in virtually all societies for a very long time, the fact that it has visibly diminished in the course of a single generation in our
Figure 19: Family Dinners Become Less Common, 1977–1999
country is remarkable evidence of how rapidly our social connectedness has been changing.
Beyond mealtime, virtually all forms of family togetherness became less common over the last quarter of the twentieth century. Between 1976 and 1997, according to Roper polls of families with children aged eight to seventeen, vacationing together fell from 53 percent to 38 percent, watching TV together from 54 percent to 41 percent, attending religious services together from 38 percent to 31 percent, and “just sitting and talking” together from 53 percent to 43 percent. It is hard not to read these figures as evidence of rapidly loosening family bonds.21
How about schmoozing at the real-life equivalent of Cheers, the neighborhood bar “where everybody knows your name”? That, too, is becoming a thing of the past. Three independent series of surveys from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s substantiate that conclusion: the frequency with which Americans, both married and single, went out to bars, nightclubs, discos, taverns, and the like declined by about 40–50 percent over the last decade or two.22 Whether we live alone or not, Americans are staying home in the evening, and Cheers has become a period piece.
Since good food and drink are often accompaniments of good schmoozing, trends in the numbers of various sorts of eating and drinking establishments in America over the last quarter century are both startling and suggestive. (See figure 20.) Between 1970 and 1998 the number of full-service restaurants per one hundred thousand population fell by one-quarter, and the numbers of bars and luncheonettes were cut in half. Meanwhile the per capita number of fast-food outlets, those “personal refueling stations” of modern society, doubled. From the point of view of conversational opportunities, the decline of conventional eating places has to some extent been offset by the proliferation of new wave coffee bars, like the cappuccino bar in Minneapolis that hosts neighborhood discussion groups. As figure 20 shows, however, even accounting for such growth, the net decline in eating and drinking establishments has been substantial.23
Unlike the “regulars” at the local bar or café, few of the other people waiting impatiently in line at McDonald’s are likely to know your name or even to care that they don’t.24 These cold numbers confirm the gradual disappearance of what
social commentator Ray Oldenburg calls “the great good place,” those hangouts that “get you through the day.”25 In effect, Americans have increasingly chosen to grab a bite and run rather than sit a while and chat.
Perhaps the most revealing trend in our use of leisure time is the fate of card games. A survey of residents in twenty-four American cities in 1940 found
Figure 20: Bars, Restaurants, and Luncheonettes Give Way to Fast Food, 1970–1998
that cards were the nation’s favorite form of social recreation. According to that survey, a deck of playing cards was found in 87 percent of American homes, as compared, for example, to radios (83 percent) and telephones (36 percent). On average, over the first half of the twentieth century one pack of cards was sold each year for every two Americans aged fourteen and over.26 Strikingly, trends in playing card sales track almost precisely the trends we spotted earlier in formal civic involvement—steady growth in the first three decades of the century, a slump during the Great Depression, and then explosive growth in the years after World War II. (See figure 21.)
Although poker and gin rummy were popular, the biggest boom was in bridge, a four-handed game that had become extremely popular by the 1950s. By 1958, according to the most modest estimate, thirty-five million Americans—nearly one-third of all adults—were bridge players. Millions of Americans, both men and women, belonged to regular card clubs—in fact, one of the earliest scientific surveys of social involvement found that in 1961 nearly one in every five adults (in Nebraska, at least) was a member of a regular foursome. In dorms and student unions of the 1960s and 1970s hundreds of thousands of college students spent millions of nights in seemingly endless games of bridge. The primary attraction of bridge and other card games was that they were highly social pastimes. “Mixed doubles” clubs were, in that more gendered
Figure 21: The Rise of Card Games in America, 1900–1951
world, one of the most important sites for men and women to gather informally. The rules encouraged conversation about topics other than the game itself, since “table talk” about the state of play was generally frowned on. “Serious” bridge players played in silence, but for most players, the weekly or monthly evening of bridge provided a valued opportunity to schmooze with friends and neighbors, mostly about personal matters but occasionally about issues of broader concern, including politics.27
As recently as the mid-1970s nearly 40 percent of all American adults played cards at least once a month, and the ratio of monthly card players to monthly moviegoers was four to one. Between 1981 and 1999, however, the average frequency of card playing among American adults plunged from sixteen times per year to eight times per year. By 1999 card playing still outdrew movies four to three, but the gap was closing fast. Were this same steady rate of annual decline to continue unabated, card playing would disappear entirely in less than two decades. For a social practice that is more than six centuries old—and one that was booming only a few decades ago—the end is coming with dramatic suddenness.28 American adults still play five hundred million card games a year, but that figure is falling by twenty-five million games a year.29 Even if we assume, conservatively, that community issues come up in conversation only once every ten card games, the decline of card playing implies fifty million fewer “microdeliberations” about community affairs each year now than two decades ago.
In fact, because card playing is necessarily a social activity (except for a few solitaire addicts), its demise will probably accelerate toward the end. If no one else in your social circle plays cards, there is no reason for you to bother learning the game. For precisely the same reason that populations of endangered species often implode, so too card playing seems likely to become extinct even more rapidly than a straight-line projection would suggest. The number of card players is rapidly falling below a self-sustaining level. In 1999 the average age of members of the American Contract Bridge League was sixty-four and rising steadily, a sure sign that the decline is generational in nature. The decline in card playing is concentrated among baby boomers and their children. A growing fraction of all card games occurs in retirement communities, the sociological equivalent of isolated ecological niches where endangered species often make a last stand.30 To college students in the 1990s, “bridge” had the same antique sound that “whist” had to their parents.
Substitutes for card playing have emerged, of course, everything from computer and video games to casino gambling. Like cards, these pastimes provide the spice of chance. Unlike card playing, however, these successors are distinguished by their solitary nature. My informal observation of Internet-based bridge games suggests that electronic players are focused entirely on the game itself, with very little social small talk, unlike traditional card games. Even fanatics of Microsoft Solitaire rarely play in a group, and any visitor to the new megacasinos that dot the land has chilling memories of acres of lonely “players” hunched in silence over one-armed bandits. (Figure 22 summarizes illustrative trends in card playing, casino going, video games, and moviegoing over the last quarter century.) Bridge, poker, gin rummy, and canasta are not being replaced by some equally “schmoozable” leisure activity.31
Yet another unobtrusive indicator of social connectedness is the practice of sending greeting cards. Sending greeting cards has declined by about 15–20 percent among both married and single people over the last decade or two. (This downtrend predates the advent of the Internet and e-mail by at least a decade, so it represents more than merely a shift from real to virtual greetings.) Individuals send more greeting cards as they age, especially if they are living alone, so card sales have been boosted in an aging America. However, at any given age Americans are now sending fewer greeting cards than people of that age did a generation ago.32 Yet again we see evidence of generational differences underlying the transformation of social customs in contemporary America.
So much for friends. How about neighbors? According to the General Social Survey, between 1974 and 1998 the frequency with which Americans “spend a social evening with someone who lives in your neighborhood” fell by about one-third—from about thirty times a year to about twenty times a year among married people and from about fifty times a year to about thirty-five times a year among single people.33 (See figure 23.) Scattered evidence further
Figure 22: Card Playing and Other Leisure Activities, 1975–1999
suggests that this decline had actually begun twenty years earlier, so that when compared with neighborliness in the mid-1950s, neighborhood ties in the 1990s are perhaps less than half as strong.34 The average American still socializes with her neighbors every couple of weeks, but as in the case of friendship, these ties are measurably more feeble now than a generation ago.
Recent years have seen much publicity given to “neighborhood associations,” and some observers claim that these are more common now than some years ago. One recent survey suggests that as many as one adult in eight is involved with a neighborhood, community, homeowners association, or block club.35 However, similar associations were frequent in the earlier decades, too; recall that Life magazine paean to Americans of the 1960s “satisfying their gregarious urges in countless neighborhood committees.” Urban sociologist Barrett A. Lee and his colleagues point out that
recent proliferation of social science literature on neighborhood organizations implies that these groups are newcomers to the urban scene. However, even the slightest amount of digging will suffice to correct that misleading impression…. [N]eighborhood organizations first appeared near the end of the last century and were well represented in most large cities prior to the Great Depression.
Figure 23: The Decline of Neighboring, 1974–1998
Long-term studies of neighborhood life from Boston to Seattle show that although neighborhoods at the end of the twentieth century were occasionally mobilized for political purposes, organized social life at the neighborhood level—street carnivals, amateur theatricals, picnics, potlucks, dances, and the like—was much more vibran
t in the first half of the twentieth century than in its waning years.36
“Neighborhood watch” groups have become more common over the last twenty years, and they often have an immediate impact in reducing crime. A 1998 Department of Justice survey of twelve cities nationwide found that 11 percent of all residents had ever attended a neighborhood watch meeting to help protect themselves from crime (6 percent in the last year), as compared with 14 percent who kept a weapon at home, 15 percent who owned a guard dog, and 41 percent who installed extra locks.37 In short, we invest more in guns, dogs, and locks than in social capital for crime defense. Perhaps partly for this reason, participation in neighborhood watch programs almost always decays after an initial burst of enthusiasm, unless rooted in neighborhood organization of a more comprehensive sort.38 Crime watch groups may have become more common, but they provide a frail replacement for the vanished social capital of traditional neighborhoods—sociological AstroTurf, suitable only where the real thing won’t grow.
As is true of formal social involvement, the picture that has emerged thus far of waning investments in schmoozing is wholly confirmed by studies of American time budgets over the last thirty years. The percentage of Americans who on a “diary day” recorded any time at all spent in informal socializing (including visiting with friends, attending parties, hanging out at bars, informal conversation, and so on) fell steadily from about 65 percent in 1965 to 39 percent in 1995. The average daily time devoted to such activities fell from about eighty to eighty-five minutes in 1965 to fifty-seven minutes in 1995. (See figure 24.) We spent only two-thirds as much time on informal socializing at century’s end as we had three decades earlier.39
This striking shift in the way we allocate our time—toward ourselves and our immediate family and away from the wider community—is confirmed by a survey of twenty-four thousand time diaries conducted by the NPD Group between 1992 and 1999.40 Over the course of the 1990s the average American came to spend nearly 15 percent more time on child or pet care (probably because of the “baby echo”—the recent spurt of children of the baby boomers) and roughly 5–7 percent more time each on personal grooming, entertainment, sleep, exercise, and transportation. By contrast, the largest changes of all involve time spent at worship and visiting with friends, both of which fell by more than 20 percent, according to this evidence.