Instead of thinking that this is a negative, i.e. we are becoming more isolated, I think this just might be a positive. Reducing the number of people by a third who know your most inner-secrets would seem to be a good thing. We should not confuse “confidants’ with “friends”.

Video games!

Perhaps…but keep in mind that I was talking only about the reduction in the education effect, not the overall “increase in isolation” claim.

It does remain true that, as the authors explicitly acknowledge, all of the major conclusions of the paper—i.e. contraction of networks, reduced density, and thus greater isolation—hinge on assuming that the definitions of “discuss” and “important” remained constant across the 19 year interval. Otherwise, the ‘04 people could have been behaving exactly like the ‘85 people, but the data would still register a shift. Something changed, but it’s clear what it was.

Overall, I’m undecided on what to make of the increasing isolation claim. As the original post notes, the shift between the two time periods is quite large, and therefore writing it off tout court entails the assumption of a substantial cultural change (or of the emergence of major offsetting behaviors—the internet, presumably). On the other hand, the trope of the atomizing effects of modern society is an old one, and I’m reflexively a bit sceptical of it.

eweininger,

I don’t see what the basis for your claim is. You seem to trying to refute the data. People’s definitions of “important” may have changed, but I think such an assertion would require independent evidence, especially as we’re not talking a huge span of time for a basic shift in ideas of what people consider important, and because it seems such a shift, if present, would leave other evidence in its wake. In any case, I think the report claims that people report less discussion of what they feel is important regardless of what those things are, in which case the constituents of “important” do not matter: whatever people consider important, they are not discussing it.

That’s a strange comment to see from my perspective. I can’t imagine maintaining eye contact with any of my neighbors, much less conversing with them for longer than five or six seconds.

That’s not anything against my neighbors, who actually seem like really nice people. I think. But the idea of engaging them in discussion, much less a discussion about a topic genuinely important to me, seems incomprehensible. Elevator rides (I live on the eighth story) feel icy when others ride too. Saying “hello” tends to elicit a very… uncomfortable response, as though the act bordered on personal-privacy invasion.

But to be more precise, what I’m saying would be the following. Imagine a list of the k things people discuss with their “confidants”:

1) weather
2) ball games
3) curtains
4) whether particular in-laws dislike them
5) which second grade teacher Junior should be enrolled with next year
6) whether they should pursue a new job opportunity
.

.
.

k) the “big events of the day” (the cold war/the “clash of civilizations”—or whatever)

Now imagine that our two samples had exactly the same distribution across this (unmeasured) list—that is, people in ’85 were exactly as likely as their counterparts in ’04 to talk about ball games, curtains, second grade, etc. with their “confidants”.

The key question would then be which of the k items gets tagged as “important” by the respondents. My surmise is that highly educated people in ’04 were less likely to apply the tag to items such as (5) and (6) than were highly educated people in ’85. Or again, things other than (k)—the “big world events”—were less likely to be considered important in ’04 than they were in ’85 by the highly educated. For this reason—or at least partly for this reason—the magnitude of the education effect is reduced in the later sample.

The assumption that has to be made is that at a normative level, “important” has been culturally re-defined in the intervening years to exclude things that are of significance only (or mainly) to the individual and her family.

Anyway, Kieran gave full license to speculate. If I was really going to take advantage of it, I’d make up a story about the more educated members of the ’04 sample having read lots and lots of articles in the middle-brow press about declining social capital and the like.

Anecdotally, and OTOMH, people in the UK are just as insular, and I’m inclined to agree with Lemuel that it is significantly an economic issue (time pressured/starved middle classes) along with two social components a) that meaningful social dialogue is distanciated and alienated (happens via media, not down the pub/pitch), and b) pressure to behave professionally has meant that more people are less willing to discuss their work, thereby cutting off avenues of meaningful discussion.

If there’s any substance to this characterisation, I would expect insularity to increase among people establishing and maintianing their careers, but to be less pronounced among people in the earlier and later parts of their careers. In other words, I would expect that people in their mid-to-late 20s would not show symptoms of insularity, with women showing less insularity than men.

I’ve skimmmed the article with this in mind without seeing anything that refers to feelings of isolation by age group. But I did spot this telling line on p 373: ‘the increase has been the most dramatic among middle-aged, better-educated, higher-income families’.

One last thought: how does this relate to the perceptions of an increasing ideological divide?

But first I wanted to ask—are we supposed to discuss this paper, or discuss it?

I mean, that’s an important issue. Unless it’s merely important.

In good earnest, though—this is quite a striking finding. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

It’s hard to have political conversations with the elders, resolute Roosevelt Democrats all, when the only permissible question is, “Which Democrat can win?” Discussions with my siblings and cousins and their offspring differ in detail but share their tenor.

The idea that someone has no one with whom to share an opinion is desolating.

But not quite convincing. The last time I enjoyed a day or two of jury duty, almost all of my fellow prospective jurors testified to having lived stupefyingly uneventful lives. A very few admitted to having purses snatched in Rome. Fewer had ever encountered the police (except for the one girl with the boyfriend who drove an Integra, and the other who’d served time for attemped murder).

Up to a point I can imagine that my fellow suburbanites live such sheltered experiences that they never talk to their neighbors and are never robbed. But then I have to sneeze.