Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital By Robert Putnam

In his article, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” Stephen Marche argues that Facebook is the vital cause for loneliness and is luring people away from social capital. According to Marche, social networking isolates individuals and creates distance, mostly amongst family members. For some, it is not only isolation but rather social loneliness. The author claims that health can also be effected by loneliness. Nowadays, due to very little verbal person to person communication, he writes that people have never been so separated from one another because of social media. Facebook users, Marche argues, have an addiction to profoundly visit their account constantly leading to the feeling of loneliness and in most cases depression. The author claims that social networking, instead of demolishing isolation, is unknowingly spreading it. Ultimately, However, Stephen’s argument fails to convince due to his abundant false assumptions and the articles confusing organization.

Robert D. Putnam, a political scientist and professor, contends in his essay titled “Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital” that there has been a decline in the social capital over the last several decades. He names that are different factors to explain this, including changes in the workforce, mobility, demographics, and technology. However, mostly it is a change in the

This factor is often overlooked as a reason impacting voter turnout but it is important nonetheless. The term “social capital” has been subject to various definitions over time. Basically, what this term refers to is the variety of social ties between individuals, and the differing connections that arise between individuals as a result of participating in various activities and organizations. "It should be noted that membership in civic organizations has steadily declined since the late 1950s. This decline in social capital means that people participate in group activities less, trust others less, and are generally more cynical, just to name a few of the symptoms.

I agree with William Deresiewicz, in the sense that we rely on technology and social media websites too much for our real social experience. Now days, it doesn’t take just a couple minutes to send out a mass social media post to let the world know what we have

He states that although more Americans than ever are being involved individually, our membership in community groups still lessens. These are due to the potential factors of "The movement of women into the labor force…Mobility…Demographic transformations…and the Technological transformation of leisure (the only potential factor that I do not agree with)." (page 393-394). He states that social capital is also declining because Americans have grown less trusting over time as "The proportion of Americans saying most people can be trusted fell by more than a third between 1960, when fifty eight percent chose that alternative, and 1993, when only thirty seven percent did." (page

Professor Robert D. Putman spent time studying and writing about the decline in America’s social capital and civic engagement. The observations talked about in Putman’s “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” have shown a decrease in community involvement and social interaction. In the twentieth century there has been noticeable declines in community involvement. Putman offers the argument that traditional interactions possibly have just been replaced by more modern versions of engagement. Whatever the case, he presents that this is leading to a fall in social capital, which provide certain issues for society. When there is an abundance of social capital in society, there is better education, better economic standing, reduced

The essay Stephen Marche wrote “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely” is talking about with the technology what the society looks like now, and social media like Facebook and twitter have made us more densely network than ever.

Putnam is critical of this trend and goes so far as to call it ‘deadly

In his famous book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam charted the decline in social capital and social institutions since the 1950s while arguing that a vibrant and successful democracy ultimately requires significant engagement from a wide segment of its population. This argument was something that even concerned Tocqueville (2006) regarding the American Experiment. Tocqueville marveled in the strengths of organizations such as the church in America. However, he also warned that the importance of individualism within American society could serve as its own downfall. This is the case that Putnam makes in his book.

Between the media and crime being so common on the streets, these numbers are surprising to me but they are also encouraging. Growing up in Fall River, a city where the crime rate is very high, hearing that people around the country do actually trust their neighbors is encouraging. I only know the two other families in my apartment building I have never had contact with the families living on the same street as me. This study shows that Americans still do communicate with one another and do not solely rely on social networking websites to interact. As of 2013, 73 percent of American adults are online (Brenner), but according to

Thomas Sander and Robert Putman wrote this article to summarize trend of social involvement in the community, and the events that caused this over the past century. It starts out informing us the benefits of a more social society, that people will be happier, less crime, economic benefits, etc. the article talks about the negative trend, but then goes into talking about how the post 9/11 youth changed this social trend, and high school and college, even middle school or grade school, started to be more active in their community’s. They conclude that one reason for this could that they realized the importance of knowing the people around them and having relationships in the community if crises did hit. It also caused the youth to believe that

New technologies have almost made social capital obsolete, clearly if social capital was an animal it would have to be put on the endangered species list for protection. It will continue to be an uphill battle as new and faster mass media is made available. It started with the television and spilled over basic telephone, and now the Internet. The telephone between 1945 and 1998 had local calls per capita climb from 304 to 2,023 annually. Basically, instead of waking or driving to the source (PTA, friends/family, or event) of information it was more convenient just to pick up the phone and gather the information from whoever actually went to the event. Interesting from reading was the telephone executive were so convinced that their primary

At first, I agreed with Stephen Marche, author of “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”, but after doing some of my own research I would like to retract my original position. We cannot blame technology for our own human condition. However Stephen Marche begs to differ. “At the forefront of all this unexpectedly lonely interactivity is Facebook, with 845 million users and $3.7 billion in revenue last year” (Marche). Stephen Marche believes Facebook is making us lonely because it is changing the dynamics of traditional friendships (Marche). He also blames Facebook for the rise in human isolation. From 1950 to 2010 a 17 percent increase in households of one were reported (Marche). Does Marche not realize that many happy Americans

Putnam defined social capital as the features of social organizations such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate the coordination as well as cooperation for mutual benefit. He emphasizes the many dimensions of the concept of social capital, and the importance of “horizontal” ties, which are networks of individual citizens and groups that enhance community productivity and cohesion bringing about positive social capital, rather than vertical ones of self-serving groups and hierarchical systems.(Putnam 9) However, Putnam has found that over time the social capital is declining in the United States, making America far less ‘connected’, which he presents in “Bowling Alone”, in that people spend drastically less time meeting with others and socializing with

In Better Together, political scientist Robert Putnam examines a growing problem in today’s society. Up until the 1970’s, Americans were becoming more and more involved in their communities, and were developing a great number of connections with one another. Over the past thirty years, however, this trend has seen a reversal. Surely, the development of technology has contributed a great deal to the advancement of today’s society. However, due to technology and the modernization of our society, people are going out of their way less and less to develop social connections, and social capital has lost its value.