Hello Netflix, My Old Friend
The rise in time spent alone is a byproduct of affluence
Welcome back to Family Matters, where we’ve got an upcoming event in D.C. February 11, and a virtual book club launching soon — fun times, join in!
The Main Event: The future of battles over kids and tech
Hill Happenings/Save the Date: Rep. Blake Moore’s Family First Act
Flowers of Fire: Co-hosting book club on South Korea and the “4Bs”
It’s Me, Hi: Commonplace, Our Sunday Visitor
Quick Slants
The Main Event
Is isolation a luxury good?
Derek Thompson took the cover of The Atlantic this month in a direction that will not be unfamiliar to anyone who’s read Robert Putnam (or the collected works of the Joint Economic Committee’s Social Capital Project.) For a long time, Americans were increasingly bowling alone. Post-pandemic, they may as well be Wii bowling in their apartments.
Thompson calls it the “anti-social century,” and puts his finger on an important driver of what’s happening. It’s not capitalism or big government forcing us to do less together — we are increasingly choosing it, at least somewhat voluntarily (what extent those choices are influenced by technology, of course, remains hotly contested.)
In the piece, Thompson marshals some stats to suggest the pandemic’s impact on socialization is lingering, and may be semi-permanent:
Restaurant traffic consisting of takeout and delivery rose from 61 percent before COVID to 74 percent last year
Solo dining has increased 29 percent over the past two years
Americans spent even more time alone - i.e. as the only person in a room - in 2023 than they did in 2021
There’s also this stunner: “The typical female pet owner spends more time actively engaged with her pet than she spends in face-to-face contact with friends of her own species.” Res ipsa loquitur.
The most convenient culprit is the smartphone. Technological change doesn’t just shift our decision-making, it can shift our preferences themselves (think of the rise of violent and outré sex practices in the age of unfettered access to explicit content.)
But it’s not all the phones. When Putnam first decried the decline of associational life, it was in the mid-1990s, when the only people with cell phones were stock brokers and drug dealers. Bowling Alone focused on the rise of a more individualistic set of values, the automobile, and, of course, television. When your only options for post-dinner entertainment were novels, the radio, or sitting on the front porch, it should come no surprise people were more likely to gather together for square dances and bingo nights.
Television, to say nothing of the infinite stream of Netflix, Disney+, ESPN+, MGM+, Paramount+, Discovery+, Peacock, Prime Video, Hulu, Hulu with Live TV, MAX, YouFace, Tubi, Fevo, FreeVee, Crackle, DAZN, Crunchyroll, and Shudder, gives you on-demand entertainment.1 No one wants to admit this too openly, but catching up on Walter White or Leroy Jethro Gibbs is far easier, and may be just as entertaining, as driving down to the community center for a lecture on German romanticism, an elementary school fundraiser with awkward small talk, or a bar trivia night where you don’t know the categories.
Technology makes living as a neo-hermit easier. But so, too, does rising societal wealth. Only the rich could escape to Long Island or the Palisades at the turn of the 20th century, leading to a popular movement for parks and beaches so the working-class could enjoy some moments outside of their own away from fetid press of humanity.2 Now we can all afford to construct our own bubbles, AirPods in, Instacart order placed, not having to deal with the sounds or smells of those who we haven’t invited in to our personal space and existence. Isolation, then, may be something we choose to purchase more of as our income goes up.
As Thompson mentions, American living conditions have improved on a creature-comfort level over recent decades. Even less-well-off Americans have a bigger TV at higher resolution than most white-collar couples did in the early 1990s. Air conditioning in the places of the country that need it is widespread; no need to make a trip to the mall, pool, or movie theatre just to escape the heat. We can afford more stuff; we can afford to build our mancaves and living rooms to be so comfortable and alluring that we hardly notice when they turn into the most bespoke prisons. “We chose our digitally enhanced world,” Thompson writes. “We did not realize the significance of what was being amputated.”
The uncomfortable truth is that allowing the world of take-out orders, Twitch livestreams, and group texts to replace communal dinners and social outings might reflect what we think is more convenient or enjoyable at any given point in time. But you don’t have to be a Luddite to see the consequences not just on society, but on the individual human person. Broad generalities are hard to prove, but given the widespread, global decline in relationship formation and fertility since the adoption of widespread broadband and smartphones, I think the burden of proof is on those who believe technology has little or no impact on these trends.
Scaling the collective action requires some talk of “ought”, rather than just “can” — conversations around a deeper type of fulfillment that religion, rather than politics or think pieces, is best suited for. Encouraging congregants and members of communities with thick bonds to put the phone down, turn the TV off, and commit to regular informal barbecues or nights out — even (or especially!) if it’s less enjoyable and less convenient — might help restore some sense of what has been willingly handed over, not taken from us. We have met the enemy, and it is us — or at least, we would have met him if we had lifted our head up from the smartphone and made eye contact.
Hill Happenings/Save the Date
Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah) has introduced a new bill to expand the Child Tax Credit - it would would bump the current $2,000-per-child credit to $4,200 per young child (under age 6) and $3,000 per school-age child between six and 17. It would also create a $2,800 tax credit for pregnant mothers, eliminate Head of Household filing and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, and other tweaks. Moore is vice chair of the House Republican Conference, making this proposal one worth keeping an eye on.
And, as luck would have it, EPPC will be hosting a briefing on Capitol Hill about the Child Tax Credit on Tuesday, February 11th. Speakers, time, and location to be announced — but if you’re in D.C., just block out the whole day and plan to meet us on the House side to talk CTC improvements.
Flowers of Fire
Also, mark your calendar and buy your books - I’ll be co-hosting a virtual book club with
’ under the auspices of . We’ll have four discussion prompts/essays, one for each week in February, while reading through Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women’s Rights, by Hawon Jung.South Korea’s poisoned gender relations and the rise of the “4B” movement have made it somewhat of a cautionary tale for many. Through weekly essays, online comments, and a closing Zoom discussion, Leah and I hope to see what kind of lessons can and can’t be learned from the Land of the Morning Calm. Grab your copy and plan to join us for the first dialogue, coming in February.
It’s Me, Hi
I was happy to write for the digital pages of Commonplace, a new journal published by American Compass, in the first week of its existence. Remote work seems to have led more white-collar moms to better balance job responsibilities and starting a family - what do we do when the return-to-office movement tries to scale it back?
“Remote Work Created a Baby Boom. Can We Keep It Up?”
“The technological frontier jumped abruptly outward during COVID. That gave more parents, moms in particular, an expanded choice set. If pregnancy in 2019 meant asking your boss for time off for increasingly frequent OB appointments, finding 40 hours a week of child care perfectly situated between work and home, and scraping enough parental leave to make sure you weren’t leaving your colleagues in the lurch, a post-2020 world gives many parents much wider latitude in divvying up work and parenthood.”
I spoke to Zoey Maraist of Our Sunday Visitor about New York's new law guaranteeing workers paid leave for expectant mothers and efforts to exapnd the Child Tax Credit
Quick Slants
John McCormack profiles the surprising absence from leading pro-life groups from the scene around the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as HHS Secretary (The Dispatch)
- , founder of Mother Untitled, has an essay unpacking what stay-at-home parenting looks like today — I think some of the old stereotypes are being dispelled. Slowly. (TIME)
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) writes about what he'd like to see the second Trump administration do to roll back the expansions of abortion access at the federal level under the Biden administration (WORLD)
Emily Kennard spoke to some Congressional Republicans who are at least theoretically open to the kinds of large CTC expansions envisioned by Sen. Hawley (NOTUS)
Carol Ryan writes that the eye of institutional investors is turning away from single-family houses — those who want to make them culprits for unaffordability will have to find a new story (Wall Street Journal)
Emily Kennard reports on some interest, and some skepticism, from Congressional Republicans on proposals to expand the value of the Child Tax Credit (NOTUS)
The Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission has released its 2025 public policy agenda, which includes supporting federal restrictions on abortion, protecting religious liberty, and advocating for pro-family tax policies
Alabama lawmakers are considering a law that would excuse breastfeeding mothers from jury duty (Yellowhammer News)
- summarizes a recent piece by John Shelton, arguing that the best family policy is broad-based growth and supply-side policy interventions - not wrong! But not fully right, either (National Review Online)
In advance of Notre Dame’s title game appearance Monday night, I’d be remiss not to share Tim O’Malley’s reflections on what ND football taught him about teaching and theology (America), or Patrick Deneen’s thoughts on Notre Dame’s place in American and Catholic history for the
.Another Substack joins the fray! This time, it’s Lyman Stone, Twitter legend, who has launched his eponymous Substack:
Comments and criticism both welcome, albeit not quite equally; send me a postcard, drop me a line, and then sign up for more content and analysis from EPPC scholars.
I really like how you pinpoint the connection between tech and isolation here. I think another example of this is air conditioning. AC is great, it's literally the first thing I installed when I bought my current house. But it allows you to stay inside when its hot. Compare that to the pre-AC era when you'd have people listening to the radio or watching TV in groups on the stoop. Or, in many old world cities, you have urban design that's built around controlling drafts and cooling streets — meaning people have a physical incentive to go outside. And the late night cultures of parts of southern Europe (eating dinner at 10 pm in Spain for example) is in part a response to heat. The list could go on and on. I was a Mormon missionary in Brazil at a time and place where most people I knew didn't have AC, and the result was a lot of group hanging out in the evenings in the courtyard. You basically couldn't stay inside by yourself.
I don't begrudge anyone putting in AC, and again I've done it myself. It's a boon in many ways. But the changes its has produced both in terms of behavior and place design I think contribute to isolation.