Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

The bulk of Bowling Alone traces the decline of American social capital through a web of contributing factors, looking for the largest culprits. Putnam identifies these as generational change, pressures of time and money, television, and sprawl. Each of these are key explanations, but they don’t capture the full complexity of this decline.

According to Putnam, the more we prioritize our private bubbles over public life, the more we disconnect from our local surroundings. This has weakened American democracy. Fewer people are engaged in politics, and those who do are often at the political poles. With less social capital, our neighborhoods are connected by fewer informal, reciprocal t... See more

Robert Putnam showed in his book Bowling Alone

as Bob Putnam lays out in Bowling Alone, participation in parent-teacher organizations has dropped from more than 12 million in 1964 to about 7 million. Despite decades of increased urban migration bringing us more physically proximate to each other, we don’t know each other better — instead, our reported feelings of loneliness have shockingly doub... See more