AntiSocial Century Notes
The Bar Is Closed
A small NC Mexican restaurant described: at a sweltering afternoon, the place was empty for seating but bustling with to-go bags; nine large brown bags filled the bar, and people entered to grab a bag and left without sitting.
The bar, once a social hub, became a silent depot for takeaway during the pandemic and beyond.
Rae Mosher, the restaurant’s GM, laments the loss of convivial bar-to-bar conversations but notes there’s nowhere else for the food to go.
Data point: in 2023, 74% of all restaurant traffic came from “off premises” customers (takeout/delivery), up from 61% before COVID, per the National Restaurant Association.
The shift from dining out to dining at home reflects a broader privatization of leisure.
Solo dining: OpenTable data shows solo dining increased by 29% in the past two years.
The main driver is “me time”; many people treat home as sanctuary, making it hard to leave for social meals.
The shift in dining mirrors a broader shift in entertainment and social rituals: private, at-home experiences replacing public, shared experiences.
Parallel drawn to Hollywood: from multi-month theatrical viewing to home delivery, where adults buy ~3 movie tickets a year and watch ~19 hours of TV weekly (roughly eight movies).
Overall trend: Americans spend less time with others than in any trustworthy data period since 1965; in-person socializing declined from 1965 to the end of the 20th century, and fell further 2003–2023 (over 20%).
Atalay’s measure of “alone” uses a broad definition: a person is in the room alone if they are the only person present, even if on the phone or in front of a computer.
Consequence: eroding companionship shows in various metrics (TV time vs. social time, pet-owner interactions, caring for others outside the family).
The End of the Social Century
The 20th century (1900–1960) was highly social: church membership, labor unions, marriage, birth rates, and numerous associations thrived; public spaces (libraries, theaters, gyms) anchored community life.
In the 1970s, Putnam’s Bowling Alone documented a shift toward withdrawal: public spaces were de-emphasized; the government slowed building them; personal mobility via car enabled suburban sprawl and private life.
From 1985–1994, active involvement in community organizations fell by nearly half; later, social activity declined across most groups.
The car and the TV were major culprits: cars separated people spatially; television redirected leisure time inward, from social to private consumption.
1965–1995: the typical adult gained about 6 hours/week of leisure time, which could have been spent in community service but was instead directed toward TV viewing or private activities.
By 1970, 6% of sixth graders had a TV in their bedroom; by 1999, that figure rose to 77%.
Time diaries in the 1990s showed couples spent almost four times as many hours watching TV together as talking to each other in a week.
People who identified TV as their primary entertainment were less engaged in volunteering, churchgoing, hosting dinners, picnicking, blood donation, and sending cards.
The public narrative often blames technology, but a deeper analysis identifies a cascade: private space, mobile automation, and mass media reshaping social life.
The phrase “the death of social connections” is a metaphor for multiple contributing factors rather than a single culprit.
In the 21st century, smartphones accelerated aloneness, adding to the car-TV legacy with a pocket-sized, always-on device that pulls attention away from face-to-face interaction.
The modern person is awake approximately 900 minutes/day; children and teens spend about 270 minutes on weekdays and 380 minutes on weekends in front of screens, totaling more than 30% of waking life in screen time.
The Phonebound Era
Smartphones are widely warned to negatively affect mental health, particularly for adolescents, but the scope of the change is deeper than headlines suggest.
Data: screens occupy >30% of waking life for young people; time spent on devices displaces driver’s licensing, dating, close friendships, and other social activities.
The share of youth meeting up with friends almost daily outside school has declined by nearly 50% since the early 1990s, with the sharpest drop in the 2010s.
The human childhood is a period for social learning; physical, outdoor, unsupervised play builds conflict-resolution and pain-tolerance skills. Modern devices pull eyes and attention away from the physical world, hindering that development.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt emphasizes childhood’s long social apprenticeship; the decline in real-world, unsupervised play threatens long-term social skills.
The rise of screens correlates with rising teen anxiety and depression; government data in 2023 show persistently sad or hopeless feelings among more than half of teen girls.
The “morning routine” TikTok trend illustrates a broader pattern: a generation increasingly documenting solitary, self-focused routines with minimal social interaction.
The modern pattern shows a paradox: even as people spend more time alone, many still desire companionship; yet technology reshapes what counts as companionship.
The “two kinds of leisure” framework: engaged leisure (social, group activities) vs. sedentary leisure (TV, video games). Single men without kids, who have the most leisure time, lean toward sedentary, solitary leisure.
Well-being tends to be higher when leisure time is spent with others; sedentary leisure correlates with negative physical and mental health.
Richard Reeves coins the concept of “neededness”: people feel essential to family and community; without it, particularly for un-/underemployed men, despair rises and addictions/overdoses increase.
Since 2001, hundreds of thousands of men have died of drug overdoses (opioids, fentanyl); Reeves notes that if overdose deaths had remained flat since 2001, roughly 400,000 fewer men would have died.
Self-imposed Solitude: The Social Fact of the Century
Even as social ties strengthen in some domains (parents with kids, couples with continuous communication), digital platforms deepen a culture of constant connection that can feel hollow.
Marc Dunkelman emphasizes the “middle ring” of social life — familiar but not intimate neighbors — is being eroded; the village that once moderated disagreements is weakening.
The middle ring historically formed the social fabric: the village helped people tolerate opposing views in everyday encounters (PTA meetings, school events).
The erosion of the village aligns with a grotesque trend in politics: politics as a zero-sum, in-group vs. out-group phenomenon rather than a shared civic project.
National Election Studies show a rising “Feeling thermometer” gap: in 2000, only 8% rated the opposing party as zero; by 2020, that figure rose to around 40%; in 2021, a third of Republican-identifying college students would not date a Democrat and over two-thirds of Democratic students would not date a Republican.
Trump’s 2024 campaign leveraged this out-group animosity, stoking a politics of eradication rather than persuasion.
The phenomenon of online echo chambers and “alone together” experiences helps explain political polarization and nihilism, including a cohort drawn to conspiracies that threaten established order to feel meaningful or powerful.
Petersen’s research identifies a subset of loners who crave chaos as a form of belonging; they seek political destruction as a last resort.
The Village, the Middle Ring, and Democracy
Dunkelman argues for the importance of the village (neighbors and local ties) in democratic health, including the ability to disagree and still cooperate on common tasks.
Explaining the decline of the middle ring helps explain political paralysis: without face-to-face contact, people lack the empathy, nuance, and incentives to compromise.
The decline of the middle ring also correlates with a broader political climate of contempt and non-cooperation.
The Introversion Delusion
While solitude can be a balm for stress or grief, chronic social disconnection over years erodes happiness.
Atalay’s research shows that a 5 percentage-point rise in alone time correlates with roughly the same drop in life satisfaction as a 10% drop in household income.
Psychological studies show that predictions about happiness are flawed: people often mispredict what will make them happy.
A classic study by Nick Epley: people overestimate the benefit of staying silent on a commute; when told to converse with a stranger, participants reported more positive feelings than those who stayed silent.
Experimental work by Margo-lis and Lyubomirsky showed extroversion weeks increased positive affect, while introversion weeks increased negative affect.
Modern conveniences manipulate us toward agoraphobic-like behavior; yet social interaction remains a reliable source of happiness due to reciprocity: hello prompts a return hello; a compliment invites a thank-you.
The paradox: even with a consumer economy optimized for introversion, happier days come from more social engagement and less isolation.
The AI Century: AI Companions and the Reconfiguration of Relationships
The convergence of AI with everyday life invites intimate-appearing conversations with machines.
A live AI demonstration during an AI conference showed a human speaking with AI that responded with high fidelity and empathy, highlighting the plausibility of believable conversational partners.
Studies show speaking on the phone (vs. text) can strengthen perceived closeness to others, due to paralinguistic cues; voice interfaces could intensify this effect with machines.
AI companions, including platforms with tens of millions of users, already host long daily engagement (e.g., ~93 minutes/day per user).
Researchers caution that AI can satisfy certain emotional needs but cannot replace the complexity and adaptability of human relationships; dependence on AI companions could crowd out genuine human interactions.
The emergence of AI friends raises questions about the long-term impact on social skills, empathy, and expectations in human relationships.
The broader concern: future generations may prefer silicon companionship over human connection, potentially eroding core social capacities.
The Next 15 Minutes: Social Infrastructure, Rituals, and Institutional Change
The “anti-social century” is not only about devices; it’s also about the decay of public social infrastructure (public spaces, libraries, gymnasiums, union halls) that anchor community life.
Eric Klinenberg calls for renewed social infrastructure: athletic fields, public pools, libraries with social spaces; better spaces for teenagers to hang out.
Government investment in social infrastructure has declined; the 21st century offers opportunities to rebuild social spaces as a counterweight to online life.
The Amish concept of Amistics: choose technologies that align with communal values; do not adopt tech indiscriminately; aim for long-term health and community preservation rather than dopamine-driven ease.
Urban-scale examples: independent bookstores have grown by over 50% since 2009; some districts ban smartphones in schools to improve focus and real-world relationships; board-game cafés proliferate and are expected to grow by nearly 2x by 2030.
Small but concrete changes can accumulate: a regulatory shift, a café, a phone locker at school, or a local library redesign can alter social behavior in meaningful ways.
The idea of ritual: rituals help inscribe social norms into calendars and daily life; a shared moral or religious ethic historically created collective action and community cohesion.
The Social Gospel movement (early 20th century) expanded faith into public justice, enabling reforms and a more communitarian outlook; today, rituals and shared norms could seed similar effects through secular channels.
The overarching claim: new norms can be created; social revolutions are possible through small, repeated, community-level actions.
The Amistics, Rituals, and a Path Forward
A balanced approach to technology is needed: select technologies that support long-term communal health.
If social life is to improve, we need to consciously cultivate rituals that bring people together and re-create the middle ring of social ties.
Possible levers for change include:
Enhancing public spaces and their accessibility to encourage gatherings.
Rebuilding routine social practices (neighborly interactions, local clubs, community volunteering).
Encouraging in-person activities for families and friends (dinners, game nights, group outings).
Promoting technology that supports connection without eroding real-world interaction (e.g., devices and platforms designed for coordinated group activities, not passive consumption).
Derek Thompson emphasizes that life is composed of 15-minute blocks; even marginal changes in daily interactions can accumulate into meaningful shifts over decades.
Final takeaway: the anti-social century is a cascade we can reverse by fostering rituals, rebuilding social spaces, and reorienting technology toward long-term human flourishing.
The Closing Thought
The anti-social century is not an inescapable fate; norms can shift, and new social ecologies can emerge.
The author’s call to action is practical and optimistic: invest in social infrastructure, nurture real-world interactions, and curate technology in ways that prioritize community and long-term well-being over short-term dopamine hits.
The central question remains: what kind of society do we choose to build when minutes turn into decades? Answering that shapes happiness, democracy, and reality itself.
ext{Alone}(t_{ ext{room}}) = egin{cases}1, & ext{if the individual is the only person in the room (even if on the phone)}\0, & ext{otherwise}
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Data anchors:
Off-premises restaurant traffic in 2023:
Solo dining increase (OpenTable):
TV in bedroom (1970): ; (1999):
Leisure time gain (1965\to1995):
Teen girls reporting persistent sadness (2023 government survey): (P(\text{sad})>0.5)
Daily meetings with friends declined ≈ (relative, since early 1990s) to meet daily
Overdose deaths (since 2001): if flat, ≈ fewer male deaths
AI companion engagement example:
Independent bookstores growth since 2009: >50% (growth metric)