The Quiet Catastrophe Brewing in Our Social Lives
b'It\\u2019s impossible to deny that the U.S. has a serious loneliness problem. One 2018 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 22 percent of all adults \\u2014 almost 60 million Americans \\u2014 said they often or always felt lonely or socially isolated. That was a full two years before the Covid pandemic. And Americans appear to be getting lonelier over time: From 1990 to 2021, there was a 25 percentage point decrease in the number of Americans who reported having five or more close friends. Young people now report feeling lonelier than the elderly.\\n\\nThis widespread loneliness is often analogized to a disease, an epidemic. But that label obscures something important: Loneliness in America isn\\u2019t merely the result of inevitable or abstract forces, like technological progress; it\\u2019s the product of social structures we\\u2019ve chosen \\u2014 wittingly or unwittingly \\u2014 to build for ourselves.\\n\\nSheila Liming is an associate professor of communications and creative media at Champlain College and the author of the new book \\u201cHanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time.\\u201d In the book, Liming investigates what she calls the \\u201cquiet catastrophe\\u201d brewing in our social lives: the devastating fact that we\\u2019ve grown much less likely to simply spend time together outside our partnerships, workplaces and family units. What would it look like to reconfigure our world to make social connection easier for all of us?\\n\\nWe discuss how the structures of our lives and physical spaces have made atomization rather than community our society\\u2019s default setting, the surprising class differences in how far we live from our families, the social costs of wearing headphones and earbuds in public, how technology has enabled us to avoid the social awkwardness and rejection inherent in building community, the fact that the nuclear family is a historical aberration \\u2014 and maybe a mistake, how texting and \\u201cghosting\\u201d affect the resilience of our core relationships, why shows like \\u201cThe Office\\u201d and \\u201cParks and Recreation\\u201d are entirely built around socializing at the office and what we are losing in an era of increased remote work, why some parents are revolting against their kids having sleepovers and more.\\n\\nMentioned:\\n\\n\\u201cYou\\u2019d Be Happier Living Closer to Friends. Why Don\\u2019t You?\\u201d by Anne Helen Petersen\\n\\n\\u201cThe Nuclear Family Was a Mistake\\u201d by David Brooks\\n\\nFull Surrogacy Now by Sophie Lewis\\n\\nRegarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag\\n\\nLetters from Tove by Tove Jansson\\n\\nBook Recommendations:\\n\\nBlack Paper by Teju Cole\\n\\nOn the Inconvenience of Other People by Lauren Berlant\\n\\nThe Hare by Melanie Finn\\n\\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\\n\\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\\n\\nThis episode of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d is produced by Annie Galvin, with Jeff Geld, Rog\\xe9 Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.'