BYU NewsNet - Social Connections in Decline

In honor of Constitution Day, Robert D. Putnam, guest lecturer at Tuesday's Forum, Sept. 26, 2006, discussed the necessity of reconstructing the social connections between friends, families, neighbors and society.

"I want to share with you a mystery that I have been trying to solve for the last 10 to 15 years." Putnam said. "Solving this mystery may be the most important thing your generation will have to do."

The secret to the mystery, Putnam said, is the decline in connections that people are making with one another. Family meal times and community picnics that sponsor friendship and neighborly connections are becoming less frequent and are affecting the morale and productivity of society.

"That is a monumental change," Putnam said. "And, except for a brief moment after 9/11 when the national hug index went through the roof, this change has continued to decline with time."

Institutions, like national governments or state organizations, have been hugely effected by what Putnam calls a lack in social capital. He said that the best predictor for the success of these institutions would be their number of choral societies--a metaphor describing the effect that social connections between community members have upon the whole community.

"The core idea of social capital is ...that social networks have value," Putnam said. "A strong network affects the kind of job you're going to get. [And] you can calculate the dollar value of your income by the dollar value of your address book."

Today, we live in a society where there is less time for social connections, Putnam said. Women are pressured to work and children spend more time indoors watching TV than they do outdoors making friends.

"Most Americans watch "Friends" instead of having [them]," Putnam said.

Using his neighborhood as an example, Putnam mentioned the barbeques and sledding parties that his neighbors attend that help them create social capital within their part of Lexington.

"It is within these communities where the kids do better, there are less teen pregnancies, and the government works better," Putnam said.

However, Putnam is not without hope for the national decline in interpersonal relationships. In 1906, America was in a similar social capital crisis resulting from the isolating effects of the Industrial Revolution and immigration into the United States. However, they changed their situation and invented new ways to created social capital connections.

"They fixed the problem, " Putnam said. "In a very short amount of time most of the major social organizations were created: the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, the Society of Women, the Rotary, the Kiwanis... "

With this encouragement, Putnam concluded with an assignment for the BYU student body.

"I have saved my toughest assignment for you," he said. "Over the course of the year, think hard about how to create in our country...new forms of social connections that will bring us together and will restore the vision of a healthy and fast-long American drama."