The Antisocial Anti-America Future

Isolated by choice and pampered by technology, the future of a social society is in the hands of Americans.

I make it a point to go out almost every day. Out somewhere, where people are. Outside of the house and the sterileness of a room that, while I love, can too easily keep me trapped inside a box and outside of society. Going out to sit in a chair that is objectively less comfortable than my couch, to spend money on an espresso that is objectively more expensive than my Nespresso. Judged by rationality, these decisions serve no purpose. Why go out? It’s a question that too many people ask themselves but never answer because the comfortable and familiar will always win if not pushed and prodded. More and more, Americans are spending their free time shuttered away from the cities they live in and in a cultivated domain that they can exercise complete control of. This crisis of socialization, or more commonly referred to as the loneliness epidemic, has rapidly reshaped American society to its core. Angrier, more separated, and more defensive, we have forgotten our common decency in service of ruthless antisocial efficiency.

There has been much written about the loneliness epidemic, and much of it has centered around a flawed thesis: Americans want to go out more, but they don’t have the spaces to do so. These “third spaces,” where people can come and go without expectation and with little to no financial investment, have become the North Star for columnists opining for a more social society. Yet I would argue the opposite. Rather than a lack of third spaces fostering community, we have a lack of people interested in taking any form of social investment in their community. We have segmented ourselves by choice, choosing to blame social media platforms and amorphous terms for cafes and public parks rather than looking inward to how American society has become so afraid of committing to something: dating, jobs, work, housing, kids, and a thousand other facets of life that have become radically reshaped after a year of social isolation.

The boogeyman of our solitude has landed in technology. Yet our descriptions of technology rob ourselves of any type of thoughtful usage. Apps and phones are given supernatural authority that we, as mere humans, are allegedly compelled to adhere to. We spend so much time blaming and deriding platforms that are completely optional. Was it Hinge and Tinder that brought on the age of the situationship, or was it the person who chose to download an app rather than go up to a person they found attractive in a cafe? Is Instagram the reason we act in service of advertising our “personal brand,” or do we have agency to act for our own lives? Did TikTok destroy our attention spans, or do we choose the easiest path for dating, keeping in touch with friends, and watching content? I believe it’s the latter. While these platforms are not positive for society, they are filling a void that would immediately be replaced by another social media platform. If TikTok goes dark tomorrow, more people will simply gravitate to the plethora of other short-form video platforms. To see a more social society, we must admit that ultimately we, the people in the society, hold the power to mold it in the image we choose.

The core of the loneliness epidemic in America comes down to the infatuation with the house. As home prices have increased, the mental investment in owning a home has similarly risen. You feel obligated to spend your time in the home, just as you spent such substantial financial sums in purchasing it. Working from home, watching movies at home, working out at home. Instead of being a place of quiet solitude, the house has become a modern-day castle fit with regal amenities and plentiful entertainment options. Fortified on all sides, the average American has no real reason to go out at all. Everything they need is in the home, and the outside world carries an inherent social investment that expends mental energy they feel they do not have. This disinterest in social norms compounds on itself to create a behavior pattern that feels hard to shake. In other words, the less you go out, the less you will want to go out.

The more the modern American house has been luxuriated, the more our spheres of social influence have minimized. When you had to physically move to engage in entertainment, you had an inherent investment in communal well-being. When the local theatre ran out of business, you lost your ability to watch the newest movies. The success of local businesses, while not shared in profit, had a tangible influence on your quality of life. Now, if the local theatre fails, which most are, your HBO Max and 60-inch Samsung OLED screen are unaffected. The more the sphere shrunk, the more we locked ourselves away in isolation. We have built a moat around our social life that only those we already know can pass.

The issue of a society-wide isolation is not unfixable. As I have written about before, the benefit of living in a developed and generally wealthy nation is the ability to have agency over your own life. Our homes can still be furnished with the newest TVs and nicest speaker bars, and we can still find the time to go watch a movie in a local theatre. Even though there is always food at home, and it is always cheaper than a local restaurant, we can still lower our gate, cross our moat, and go to a diner with friends. It requires acknowledgment of our own personhood in order to achieve this society that we have had before and can have again. The 1990s are not an alien world; the “third spaces” they inhabited are by and large still here! We need to become invested once again in things that do not directly affect us but make our lives intangibly better. A responsibility to simply go out without a purpose day in and day out.

Part of this change will require action larger than the individual. Cities built off of commercial and residential districts functioned on the idea that you simply had to go out to do things. With the advent of the internet, however, these long drives to urban centers look more and more unpalatable on a financial and social level. Mixed-use developments will be necessary to provide the convenience of digital isolation while bringing together our communities. Existing suburbanized communities and sprawling metropolitan areas will require a retroactive effort to mitigate the existing infrastructural bias against socialization. Cities like Dallas, Phoenix, and Kansas City, and their surrounding suburbs, have been engineered to make the automobile a requirement for daily life. To ensure that these cities and their residents are not left out of our pro-social future, we must reimagine the very foundation of a sprawling urban city.

In these cities, where major infrastructural upheaval is infeasible, a pivot must be made toward micro-communities of urbanism that are smaller in scope and service but still provide opportunities for social investment. This means commercial development in suburban communities, utilizing dense construction to promote a sense of communal linkage. This will not be perfect, but it will allow Americans to reintroduce themselves to a community they feel little attachment to. Breaking apart the visual monotony that defines suburbia will provide a much-needed opportunity for productive beautification vis-à-vis the private sector. Without these, the core problem of American isolation will exist and indeed thrive.

As a whole, though, the future of a social America is in the hands of Americans. The foundation is already here for a pro-social country that can integrate digital convenience with interpersonal meaning. A return to the 1990s will never happen, and for good reason, but the values that have defined the pre-phone nostalgia are just as achievable today as they were when new Seinfeld episodes were appointment viewings. We need fewer think pieces lamenting an alleged lack of public spaces and more actionable interest from those who see our growing loneliness as an existential crisis. Thinking creatively toward the future rather than wishing for the past will produce nothing but more discontent.