Jeremy L. Berg

If I have socially withdrawing tendencies, it’s because I’m trying to survive a life married to an incurable socialite who’s constantly dragging me into public. When we’re not out on the town, she’s welcoming the town into our home. Just this morning I asked what are evening plans are, and she said, “Not much…except Peter is inviting his entire basketball team to sleep over.” We have very different definitions of “not much.” All this to introduce Scot McKnight’s substack today on Derek Thompson’s essay in The Atlantic, “The Anti-Social Century.”

Keri and I often joke that if Cupid’s arrow hadn’t struck, I could have had another life as a contented monk curating old books in a monastery library. Perhaps, but then who would drive me crazy? (I think I finally get why she chose Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love” for our wedding dance!) But as you read this alarming societal trend toward an unhealthy kind of introversion, I want to thank my wife for making sure I remain a somewhat socially adjusted and relationally healthy kind of recluse. McKnight writes:

Social media, at some level, drew Americans into public engagement. The pandemic, however, has done its damage. In a February essay in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson, “The Anti-Social Century,” Thompson describes a restaurant in which the traffic is for takeouts, so much so the owner had to post a sign on the bar “Bar Seating Closed” so he could make room for the packages awaiting their pick-upper. Thompson’s commentary then observes, “In the past few decades, the sector has shifted from tables to takeaway, a process that accelerated through the pandemic and continued even as the health emergency abated. In 2023, 74 percent of all restaurant traffic came from “off premises” customers—that is, from takeout and delivery—up from 61 percent before COVID, according to the National Restaurant Association.” During Covid Kris and I ordered out from our local favorite restaurants quite often. The restaurant workers began to recognize my voice when I called in the order, and we soon recognized those who trotted from restaurant to our car to deliver our package of food. The Picnic Basket and Milwalky Taco were our top two choices.

Of a necessity Covid forced restaurants to establish side hustles in both takeout and in hiring delivery workers. Covid reshaped America’s social life. As Thompson writes, “The flip side of less dining out is more eating alone. The share of U.S. adults having dinner or drinks with friends on any given night has declined by more than 30 percent in the past 20 years.” Home has become a sanctuary more than it had been, and people feel less safe. OpenTable claims dining alone has increased nearly 30% in the last two years. “Alone” for Thompson means a person is the only one in the room, or with one’s spouse, with a plate of food, a phone, or a computer.

Read McKnight’s full piece HERE.

Skipping ahead … McKnight closes with several quotes from Thompson’s essay for you to chew on today:

“In a healthy world, people who spend lots of time alone would feel that ancient biological cue: I’m alone and sad; I should make some plans. But we live in a sideways world, where easy home entertainment, oversharing online, and stunted social skills spark a strangely popular response: I’m alone, anxious, and exhausted; thank God my plans were canceled.”

“All of this time alone, at home, on the phone, is not just affecting us as individuals. It’s making society weaker, meaner, and more delusional.”

“Home-based, phone-based culture has arguably solidified our closest and most distant connections, the inner ring of family and best friends (bound by blood and intimacy) and the outer ring of tribe (linked by shared affinities). But it’s wreaking havoc on the middle ring of “familiar but not intimate” relationships with the people who live around us, which Dunkelman calls the village. “These are your neighbors, the people in your town,” he said. We used to know them well; now we don’t.”

“The village is our best arena for practicing productive disagreement and compromise—in other words, democracy. So it’s no surprise that the erosion of the village has coincided with the emergence of a grotesque style of politics, in which every election feels like an existential quest to vanquish an intramural enemy.”

“A night alone away from a crying baby is one thing. A decade or more of chronic social disconnection is something else entirely. And people who spend more time alone, year after year, become meaningfully less happy.”

“Despite a consumer economy that seems optimized for introverted behavior, we would have happier days, years, and lives if we resisted the undertow of the convenience curse—if we talked with more strangers, belonged to more groups, and left the house for more activities.”