A Surgeon General’s warning? A Trust for Civic Life? Peak Loneliness?
A hot week for reads!
It’s been hot outside and a hot week for reads in the Connective Tissue universe! So we’re scrapping our regular structure for curated lists and highlighting several compelling reads from the week.
We start by sharing the Surgeon General’s call for a warning label on social media while surfacing the pushback he received in response. We then feature two pieces on the newly launched Trust for Civic Life (thanks to the 20 people who sent this to me), one descriptive and one a bit more critical. We wrap by including two other pieces we found interesting on self-care and loneliness and peak loneliness.
Let us know what you think. Should the Surgeon General be treating social media like cigarettes? Will $50M of philanthropic investment in the civic life of rural areas do anything? Have we reached peak loneliness?
Stay cool,
Sam
The Surgeon General’s Social Media Warning
POINT: New York Times - “Surgeon General: Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media” by Dr. Vivek Murthy (June 2024)
“A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.”
America’s very active (!) and very soft spoken (🤫) Surgeon General is at it again. This time he’s calling for “a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.” He draws on the example of the surgeon general’s label on tobacco — which changed behavior around smoking — as proof of the effectiveness of a similar effort tied to social media. While he acknowledges that we don’t have perfect information about social media’s effects, he describes the situation as “an emergency” in which you have to “use your best judgment” and “act quickly.” To the Surgeon General, time is of the essence: the well-being of our children is at stake.
COUNTERPOINT: The Atlantic - “Instagram is Not a Cigarette” by Caroline Mimbs Nyce (June 2024)
“It is time to have a real conversation about adolescent mental health in this country versus simply scapegoating social media.”
But Caroline Nimbs Nyce says not so fast! Highlighting active debates in the scientific literature about the effects of social media on teens, she describes the difficulties of actually executing such a warning label. What language would they use when describing social media’s harms? And what even constitutes social media in the first place? More to the point, Nyce worries that this warning label places the burden on children and parents — not social media companies — to mitigate the risks of social media.
Our Question: What is the appropriate role of the nation’s leading public health official at a moment when Americans are highly distrustful of experts (particularly those in public health)?
The Trust for Civic Life
POINT: The Chronicle of Philanthropy - “Major Funders Bet Big on Rural America and ‘Everyday Democracy’” by Drew Lindsay (June 2024)
“The trust sees small, local groups as instruments of change — modern versions of the organizations that scholars from Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Putnam have singled out as a distinguishing feature of American democracy.”
This piece introduces the Trust for Civic Life, which launched on Monday by announcing $8 million in funding (of the $50 million it says it will give over the next five years). The Trust invests $300,000+ in organizations — often in high-poverty towns, regions, and rural areas — to advance the work of “everyday democracy” that bring people together to address shared challenges. Examples of such groups include Industrial Commons in western North Carolina and Chinle Planting Hope in the Navajo Nation. The author recognizes that these groups have often been overlooked by national philanthropists based in major coastal cities, and indicates that this is a step toward rebalancing such philanthropic investment. But will $50 million be enough, especially following generations of philanthropic disinvestment from these places?
COUNTER-ISH-POINT: New York Times - “Is the Partisan Divide Too Big to Be Bridged?” by Jonathan Weisman (June 2024)
“Call it the kumbaya industrial complex … Bridge-building has become the hot new concept in a country looking for hope.”
From Kentucky to Minnesota to Michigan, the author takes us on a journey to visit several grassroots, “bridge-building” organizations that are aiming to bring polarized factions into common conversations. The focal point of this piece is also the new Trust for Civic Life, though, interestingly, he highlights many organizations that were not funded by the trust. Weisman shares compelling stories of the connective promise of the bridge-building organizations: groups like Kentucky’s Rural-Urban Exchange that are facilitating connections across geographic difference, and The Lyceum Movement’s efforts to revive the rural Lyceums of the 19th century. However, Weisman also observes several challenges that lie ahead. Should we be talking about politics more, or less? Is the antidote for reconciliation to call it out, or to bring people together around less overt discussions? And are these groups already preaching to the choir?
Our Question: Why should community groups partner with a collection of unaccountable, geographically distant funders to advance their proximate work of “everyday democracy?”
Some Other Good Reads
Vox - “How the self-care industry made us so lonely” by Allie Volpe (June 2024)
“One practice designed to relieve us from the ills of the world — self-care, in its current form — has pulled us away from one another, encouraging solitude over connection.”
Following a long tradition of writers exploring the intersection of the commercial and the therapeutic, Volpe makes the case that the practice of self-care (and the industry that emerged around it) has contributed to our so-called loneliness epidemic. She points out a specific phenomenon in the self-care industry: when companies market “genuinely vitalizing practices” as “individualized ‘solutions’ to real problems” that actually require “structural change,” we “increasingly look inward.” In a line that echoes Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism, Volpe describes how “self-care” turned into “self-obsession.” Ironically, however, the solutions she offers at the end are still highly individualized choices: “avoid blaming ourselves” and “showing up for a friend in need.” So much for structural and cultural change.
Wisdom of Crowds - “Come Together!” by Christine Emba (June 2024)
“We’ve reached peak loneliness, and the papers want us to do something about it.”
In this
piece, declares that we’ve reached “peak loneliness,” as evidenced by everything from the Surgeon General’s advisory on loneliness, to, well, many of the news headlines we share each week (see above), to Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation topping the best-seller list. She then wonders about its implications for society, pointing to ’s suggestion that our politics and culture are moving from organizing around personal freedom to embracing solidarity. Ultimately, she holds that “a shared recognition of our loneliness has finally dawned” and that this could be “the first step back from the brink.”→ Read the full newsletter here.