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Is Facebook making us lonely? No, the Atlantic cover story is wrong.

slate.com · 1,592 words · saved by 1 readers

Americans devour books that say we’ve never been lonelier or more disconnected. The Lonely Crowd, The Fall of Public Man, and The Pursuit of Loneliness rank among the best-selling sociology texts in history. In recent years, Bowling Alone and Alone Together won significant attention and generated widespread debate. Often, these books lament the loss of a Golden Age when Americans had better marriages, stronger communities, safer streets, and greater happiness. They warn that we’ve grown dangerously isolated, and after we read them we return to our friends, families, and colleagues to discuss why we no longer spend time together. In this month’s Atlantic cover story, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” the novelist Stephen Marche offers an unusually extreme claim about the state of our disunion: “[W]e suffer from unprecedented alienation,” he writes. “We have never been more detached from one another, or lonelier. In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and

For all our talk of self-reliance and rugged individualism, Americans are actually far less likely to live alone and enjoy key forms of personal autonomy than people in other countries Photograph by Cathy Yeulet/Hemera. Copy Link Share Share Comment Gift Story Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month. Copy Link Share Share Comment Gift Story Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month. Americans devour books that say we’ve never been lonelier or more disconnected. The Lonely Crowd , T

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