Trend Statement #10: According to some experts there is a growing decline in activities,
organizations and experiences that connect Americans to one another.
Rationale:
In Bowling Alone, author Robert Putman (2000) notes there are less things in society in which people can
connect or in which shared experiences exist. Several of the trends the author notes include:
Declining political participation, as measured by voting rates and participation in local and
regional political activities (boards, commissions, serving on political clubs, etc.).
Declining civic participation, as measured by declining membership in charterbased associations,
PTA, and community clubs and organizations.
Declining church membership and attendance.
Declining connections in the workplace, as measured by declining union membership, declining
membership in professional associations, and workforce volunteering.
Declining informal social connections as measured by entertaining in the home, having friends
over for dinner, drinks, or games, playing cards in the home, eating in formal restaurant settings
(with increases in fast food), membership in bowling leagues and other informal sporting
activities (couples with rises in spectator sport attendance and viewing), and decreases in informal
socializing.
Declines in philanthropy, participation in specific community projects, and charitable giving
(although volunteering in the community has gone up).
Declines in the perception that people are honest and trustworthy.
There have been increases in participation in small groups that focus on narrow, very specific
issues like the environment, statewide ballot issues, or other wedge political issues.
In The Paradox of Choice, author Barry Schwartz (2005) notes that today’s society is so overwhelmed
with choices that shared experiences do not even exist, noting that even television does not bind people
together like it once did or that undergraduate students no longer have the shared experience of going
through one standard curriculum, but instead take a cafeteria approach to choosing colleges.
This sentiment is echoed by Gregg Easterbook (2003), who in the Progress Paradox notes that when
people become overwhelmed by choice, they suffer from anxiety because they realize that many other,
and perhaps better, choices exist, leading to a cycle of never being satisfied.
More recent research by Bishop (2009) and Chinni (2010) confirms that this phenomenon is accelerating
in their books The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart and Our
Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth about Real America. Richard Florida (2003, 2009) also
discussed on these trends from an economic perspective in two books, The Rise of the Creative Class and
How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, while
Jane Jacobs’ (1970) foresaw the trend of Americans sorting and its implications over 40 years ago in The
Economy of Cities.