Why are we Losing our Community Connections?

People are communal. It's always been to our advantage to be as it's easier for us to survive when we work in groups. It seems that even on a subconscious level we are driven to maintain group connections. We strive to fit in, don't tolerate loneliness and our mental health suffers when we are isolated. There is even evidence that our immune system functions better when we are surrounded by people we trust.

I recently touched on how the social situations we're used to being in will affect how comfortable we are in given situations. This promoted a question from @top.quark as to why we might be losing our community connections in recent generations, which I thought would be an interesting topic to delve further into.

What would happen if the internet/power went out for an extended period of time? Would we know how to do things that we've come to rely on it for? I recall an event in my childhood when heavy, sticky snowfall brought down power lines and many towns were without power for 3 days or more. It was an eye opener, even then before the internet, how reliant we'd become on electricity as we tried to figure out what to do with ourselves. No TV for entertainment, so maybe I can vacuum my room...no, that needs power too.

What stood out the most from my memories of that time was how everyone reconnected. A trip to the local shops resulted in cheerful conversations with strangers with the current situation being the ice breaker. Local pubs were bustling with activity. My husband's family lived in a pub at the time and of course the pumps weren't running, so it was his job to run down into the cellar and fill up jugs from the beer barrels. Eveyone pulled together to help one another through the adversity of this event, whether they knew each other or not.

Over time as home entertainment has expanded more and more, pubs have closed or had to change over to providing food more than drinks and music. The population has grown since my childhood, yet I feel like the places in walking distance of main residential areas where we can socially gather have dwindled.

Loneliness is at epidemic proportions in the western world and more and more people are even becoming uncomfortable with socialising. Striking up conversation on public transport with strangers is a rarity with the majority of people looking at mobile phone screens and someone wearing headphones is usually a symbol to say "I'm not open to talking to anyone right now".

At one point when children came home from school they changed into their play clothes and played out with friends until mum called them in for dinner. Homework didn't exist until high school and then it didn't need to be done every single day. Today it's home from school, get homework done, then watch TV, play on computer games or doom scroll on social media. The luckier ones might have some sports activities after school where they can socialise a bit, before having to rush back home and squeeze in homework.

Only a few generations ago neighbourhoods connections would usually be maintained by the housewives as they chatted over the fence and maybe organised get togethers. Women would also be the ones helping out with childcare and care of elderly parents. Today most women have to work whether they want to or not.

You might say that it's okay, were still socialising through school and work, but what about those who are retired, disabled or unable to work for some reason? What about those coming home to an empty house, something that is probably more common than ever before. Do these people not matter any more because they aren't contributing to productivity?

In comment on my previous post, @finec brought up the practice of senicide in many ancient cultures. Do we risk devolving back to that if we ignore the social needs of our no longer "productive" members of society and let them descend into loneliness and depression because they can't socialise in the workplace? Canada might even be reaching that point now that they are considering expanding the offer MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) to those with depression and have already included those with disabilities.

When it comes to socialising advances in technology can be both a blessing and a curse. I'm a Pom. That is I'm British and currently living in Australia. Modern technology means that I can keep on touch with family on the other side of the world, via writing, talking and even visually face to face in real time with video calling. That's amazing and a blessing, especially considering that it wasn't long ago when the only way I could have communicated at that distance would have been via letters which would have taken months to reach their destination.

For those who might be confined to their bed or home due to illness or disability technology can be a lifeline to the world outside. But is it good enough to replace physical contact and real world interactions? In 2020 during Covid lockdowns suicide rates and depression shot up. Young children had developmental delays and for some people their mental health still hasn't fully recovered even 5 years from it starting. We could still video chat and go on social media, though, so shouldn't that have been good enough? Obviously not.

When technology unnecessarily becomes our main means of socialising it can end up having the opposing effect of isolating from the real world and making it harder for us to interact in the real world. The less we communicate with people in real life the less comfortable and capable we become of interacting with them. Thus we end up in a downward spiral as virtual socialising can't measure up to the benefits of physical socialising and physical contact. Yet social media has been gamified to become addictive, making it hard for us to tear ourselves away from it and shortening our attention spans.

Within social media there is even a trend developing of memes about not going outside because there are PEOPLE out there! There is almost a glorification of being "neurodivergent" to excuse yourself from having to deal with people in real life any more. Yet the irony is that many of these social issues are quickly remedied when we are put into a situation where we have to interact in the real world regularly again, as long as it's not a situation like a toxic work environment. Our ability to interact with people also quickly returns as we put ourselves into situations where we have to interact, even if we are introverts.

As we become more connected with more people we expand our horizons, but we could also be making it ever harder to keep local community connections. Within a limited group of people we can get to know and become familiar enough with everyone to know who we can trust and who we might need to use caution around. As the group gets bigger we will be less able to develop a deep familiarity with everyone. There is no way anyone living in a city would know eveyone else living there, so we tend to be more wary of others. Say "good morning!" with a smile to a stranger in the city and you are less likely to get an equally friendly response as you would if you lived in a village. So in these living situations if we want to be communal we tend to form community groups which meet up at certain times. Otherwise we end up isolated in a crowded place of strangers.

We hear a lot of complaints about how hard it is to buy a house in today's economic climate. Last century it became something of a tradition for children to move out and buy their own homes often quite far away from their parents. This is likely another thing that has separated communities and brought in a new pattern of family units or the nuclear family instead. This family then again gets separated when the children move out, leaving the parents to age alone and probably get dropped in the nursing home when they are no longer able to cope. Sometimes the child moves out and ends up living alone as well as less people from the Millennial and Z generations settle down and have children.

So it got me thinking that maybe it's not such a bad thing that children can't afford to move out and more of them are staying living with their parents as long as they get on well enough. I even know of couples living with one of their parents.