Startling News about Friendships

Writing in The Week, Damon Linker breaks down a study published by the Survey Center on American Life last week that contained a notable and depressing finding.: The number of Americans who report having no close friends has skyrocketed since 1990, from 3 to 15 percent of men and from 2 to 10 percent of women. Moving so much of our lives online, Linker writes, has changed the way many of us form relationships: “People sharing similar interests, hobbies, quirks, and obsessions can easily find each other online and enjoy a digital facsimile of friendship with others. These virtual communities are more like collective groups of topic-specific pen pals than real-world friendships.” This is bad news for each of us personally, but also for the function of society and politics at large: “A nation of increasingly lonely, friendless citizens given outlets to find collective, communal fulfillment online will be a nation spawning a range of radical political factions, groups, or movements defined by and drawing the bulk of their cohesion from their loathing of other factions, groups, or movements.”

I lifted this from The Morning Dispatch, which lifted it from another source, as noted. The Morning Dispatch is a part of the The Dispatch News Organization, started by Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. I'm a big fan, as shown by the fact I have a subscription. Chris Stirewalt, David French, and several others are contributors/editors. TMD is a morning newsletter that is very well researched and written and gives ample space to a couple of important issues each morning. This morning it was Big Tech and the bipartisan (well, in name only) commission for investigating January 6. It is a conservative leaning but non-Trumpist, in every way but they won't call themselves Never Trump because that would be a denial of history.  That's my shoutout. Check them out. David French's unabashed writing about the church and gospel are one of the reasons I take it.