How Americans Became Less Connected

Dear reader,

Believe it or not, we are experiencing a period of record declines in violent crime in the United States.

I say “believe it or not” because the public, by and large, does not believe it. Americans consistently report a perception that violent crime is increasing, a phenomenon observed over nearly three decades when the reverse was mostly true.

And I can imagine some of the reasons for the dissonance: The U.S. is still a good deal more violent than most other high-income countries. The country has grown rapidly less affordable in recent years, wages are stagnating, a sustained series of mass protests is afoot.

But I also have a theory, which has been reinforced by our coverage of violence prevention: Violence has only gotten more visible. Not only do about three-quarters of Americans say they routinely get local news and information about violent crime, but it’s also extremely common to see violence in our social media feeds. Mass shootings and political violence, now routine, feed into the sense of its ubiquity. It has become a spectacle that’s hard to look away from, and its absence is far less visible than its presence, wherever it appears.

So over the past few months, we’ve been pairing stories about violence prevention with a quizzical prompt: What is the opposite of violence? If we are being constantly buffeted with images of violence, how could we begin to observe the forces that restrain or counteract it?

We’ve gotten more than 300 responses to these questions, and over the past several weeks, we’ve worked with our colleague Ama Sarpomaa to explore ways of measuring what we heard.

One of the most common themes in what we’ve heard is “community” and its variants. Many responses included indicators such as “interactions with neighbors,” “social connectedness” and “neighbors looking out for each other.” “Neighbors would not commit violence against one another,” wrote one young adult from Chicago. “Instead, they watch out for one another. That is the opposite of violence.”

So in today’s newsletter, the beginning of a series arising from our violence prompt, Ama explores one of the best measures we could find in this direction: the nation’s levels of socializing and communicating. It might not surprise you to hear this, but even though violence has been declining, social connection has been too.

— Matt Thompson

When did people stop connecting?

The number of hours Americans spend “socializing and communicating” has been falling since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking it in 2003.

Since then, there have been any number of developments that might have helped fuel isolation, from the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 to pandemic-induced stay-at-home orders and curfews in the early 2020s. In 2024, Americans spent about 35.4 minutes per day socializing in person, down from 46.8 minutes a little over two decades ago. Although the number is about a minute higher from the year before, it hasn’t bounced back to prepandemic levels.

Dr. Vivek Murthy, the nation’s 19th and 21st surgeon general, officially declared a national epidemic of loneliness and isolation in 2023. Low levels of social connection were fueling increasing rates of loneliness, he said, raising people’s risk of disease and chances of dying early. His advisory included recommendations for improving social connection, such as adopting pro-connection policies and developing a research agenda.

It’s not just the U.S. Many countries are taking steps to address growing loneliness. In 2019, for example, a supermarket chain in the Netherlands introduced “chatty checkouts” for customers open to casual interactions with cashiers and others. The United Kingdom appointed a minister for loneliness in 2018 to plan the government’s response to loneliness. The baton has since been passed down to the nation’s minister for sport, tourism, civil society and youth, who’s tasked with addressing loneliness and social connection.

Why is this happening?

Social connection in the U.S. is falling for many reasons — political conflict, economic stress and technological evolution are just a few.

Text messaging and algorithm-driven binge watching on social media, for instance, have completely altered how teenagers interact. A Harvard researcher found that out of a group of 500 teens surveyed daily, over half reported that they hadn’t spoken to anyone in person or online in the last hour. Apps like TikTok and Instagram have implemented screen time limits that can easily be ignored, and artificial intelligence has completely replaced in-person contact for some.

One big factor, researchers say, is disappearing social infrastructure — physical places and services that encourage social activity. Third places, the informal public gathering spaces outside one’s home (first place) and work (second place), play critical roles in connecting people. From parks to bars to libraries, the nation has been losing places where friends and strangers congregate.

“There are broader ripple effects on other determinants of health beyond just, say, nutrition when we lose those types of places,” said Dr. Danielle Rhubart, a faculty member in biobehavioral health at Pennsylvania State University.

These effects can be particularly evident during natural disasters. When the fast-moving wildfires tore through parts of California in early 2025, for example, restaurant owners and street vendors in Los Angeles mobilized in just a few days to feed first responders. Local gyms gave evacuees and first responders free access to gym amenities like showers and charging stations.

A research team led by Dr. Jessica Finlay, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, found that the number of third places in multiple categories decreased between 2011 and 2015 across the United States. Then came the pandemic, which accelerated the rate of closures and shifted the types of businesses being born.

Some spaces have also held on to lockdown-era policies that discouraged people from lingering. Simple things that often make a space more inviting, like comfortable seating, public bathrooms and human-powered checkout counters are becoming scarcer, Dr. Finlay said. These examples of hostile architecture are completely altering spaces which once promoted social gathering, she argued, and could be contributing to the decline.

Who has been most affected?

There are significant disparities in the distribution and quality of third places. Communities with more Black or Latino people, regions with higher poverty rates and rural areas tend to have a limited supply. The numbers are particularly stark in majority Latino communities, which had between 82 and 86 percent fewer of these spaces than areas with little to no Latino residents, according to Dr. Rhubart’s research.

There were similar disparities in the number of closures between 2019 and 2021, Dr. Finlay and her team found. Many of the same types of communities already lacking these environments lost disproportionately more of them.

On average, parks serving neighborhoods of color are also roughly half the size and serve nearly five times as many people as parks in majority white neighborhoods, according to a Trust for Public Land analysis that used U.S. census data.

What’s being done about this?

Some states are working to improve social connection:

Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services awards grants to private and public organizations fighting loneliness and improving the quality of life for older adults and people with disabilities.
Utah established a Social and Community Health Day last year to encourage Utahns to connect with friends.
Two teenagers in Atlanta were awarded a $50,000 grant by the mayor’s chief of staff to help bring to fruition their reimagination of third spaces.

And some organizations are building off the surgeon general’s 2023 recommendations:

RAND and the Connection Institute, with support from the Barnes Family Foundation, is conducting the first nationally representative survey focused solely on measuring social connection. The survey will be published annually for the next 25 years.
Dr. Murthy started a Knight Foundation-funded initiative in 2025 that will “spotlight scalable models that help communities thrive and promote their replication across the country.”

What can I check out next?

The New York Times reporter Dana G. Smith described the ways introverts can build strong social connections without being “the life of every party.”
The World Health Organization released a detailed report on social connection in 2025.
Can online communities be third places? Rolling Stone has answers.
NPR’s “Here & Now Anytime” podcast looked at how people socialize and combat isolation in third spaces.
Take this New York Times quiz to find out how healthy your ‘social biome’ is.

— Ama Sarpomaa

Your turn

Test your knowledge: According to a Pew Research Center study from 2023, roughly what share of teens felt greater happiness and peace without their smartphones?

A tenth

Tell us your thoughts: Have you seen growing or decreasing social connection in your own life or community? What do you think is the relationship between growing isolation and the violence decline? Please email your thoughts to [email protected].

Ama Sarpomaa contributed reporting.

The Headway initiative is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as a fiscal sponsor. The Woodcock Foundation is a funder of Headway’s public square. Funders have no control over the selection, focus of stories or the editing process and do not review stories before publication. The Times retains full editorial control of the Headway initiative.

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