On Tuesday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) announced on Twitter that he is introducing “a groundbreaking bill — the National Strategy for Social Connection Act.” Its goal is to address the “epidemic” of loneliness and social isolation in the United States right now that threatens “individual health and longevity” and decreases “community resilience, safety, and economic prosperity.”
But while this is certainly a problem that must be addressed — and I applaud Sen. Murphy for bringing the subject into the national conversation — it is not one government can solve.
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First, we ought to understand this crisis — and it is a crisis — as one of the most significant challenges we face right now. According to a study from Harvard’s School of Education, “36% of all Americans—including 61% of young adults and 51% of mothers with young children—feel ‘serious loneliness.’” Twenty-two percent of millennials say they have no friends, and “51% of young Americans say they feel down, depressed or hopeless.”
Tim Carney, in his book Alienated America, carefully lays out the data on declining church attendance, marriage rates, and civil society involvement. It is impossible to read it and come away without a sense that there is something seriously wrong.
But, again, this is not a problem to be solved primarily by the government. After all, a major spike in this type of isolation was a direct consequence of government policy itself.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government shut people in their homes, forced children to “learn” online, and mandated that everyone must cover their faces for years on end, which undeniably created distance between people and made it harder to connect. Taken all together, these pandemic restrictions surely had the effect of exacerbating isolation.
Additionally, just a look at what this bill recommends makes it clear just how inadequate it is. It wants to establish an office in the executive branch on combating loneliness and strengthening communities, requiring that we establish a “national strategy on social connection,” and likely issue official federal guidelines on the subject as well.
But it seems quite odd that anybody would look to the faceless blob that is our federal government, the least personal entity there can possibly be, for guidance on social connection. It is a contradiction in terms.
Carney identifies the two causes of our isolation as hyper-individualism on one hand and over-centralization on the other. Each has subsumed the “middling” institutions, which are the things that actually breed such connections. The bill introduced by Sen. Murphy is a prime example of over-centralization, where a thoroughly non-personal, huge entity takes up the functions that used to be performed by smaller community groups.
As such, it makes the problem worse because it orients our energy toward a centralized, faceless, totalizing force rather than an actual local, human one.
Economist-philosopher F.A. Hayek agreed. He defined the “fatal conceit” as the belief that “man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes.” But this is folly because it assumes that human nature is such that we can account for all the complexities of the real world while designing it — despite the fact it is not.
The way things can and will change is through a bottom-up, organic process where people return to the things that traditionally gave them meaning and social connection, such as religion, family, and those “mediating institutions” so vital to a strong community.
It is a far more difficult and long path than merely passing a bill, holding a fancy celebration once it is signed, and then acting surprised when it does nothing. But because this is, at root, a problem of culture, its solution must be primarily one of culture, too.
The one area in which it makes sense — and is actually quite important — for the government to get involved, though, is with respect to education. Yes, it is a “government institution,” but it is also thoroughly personal and an institution whose purpose is, as conservative intellectual Russell Kirk wrote, “to develop the mental and moral faculties of the individual person.”
This, however, is the exception rather than the rule, it ideally would happen on the state or local level, and Murphy’s plan does not address it.
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In short: The proposed bill remains imprudent mainly because the federal government is simply not the institution that should be taking up this problem. It is good that it is a subject being brought into the mainstream, though, and I hope it sparks real conversation that can eventually start to shift the tide.
Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.