Cutting off your family? Grief culture? Buying back the block?
Highlighting the community content you may have missed between all of the U.S. political headlines.
Considering the recent flurry of political headlines, it’s understandable if you missed some of the more interesting reads on connection and community over the past few weeks. But worry not, we’ve been intentionally ignoring all things politics to ensure you get your fix of community content. Here are a few pieces that caught our eye this month:
Ellen Berry’s thought-provoking piece on the emergence of TikTok therapists encouraging young people to cut themselves off from their “toxic” families.
Elias Crim’s essay on how Trumpism is filling a societal void for the processing of collective grief and loss.
Two recent studies on how screen time limits lead to more social activity and prosocial behavior among kids and adults.
A new playbook from Brookings Metro on how community members can spur more local ownership and governance of commercial real estate.
Poke around. Give the articles a read. Let us know what you think we can do better. Just please don’t call us “toxic” and cut us off from your inbox 🙏.
- Sam + Eric
The Reads
The New York Times - “Is cutting off your family good therapy?” by Ellen Berry (July 2024)
“Therapists are trained to avoid imposing their own views when clients contemplate major decisions, and to uphold the principle of non-maleficence, or doing no harm. And for the most part, they are taught to regard family relationships, even flawed ones, as an important part of a flourishing life.”
What happens when TikTok, “trauma” culture, and family mix? In this thought-provoking piece, Berry highlights the rise of a TikTok generation of therapists who’ve inspired some young people to completely estrange themselves from family environments they deem “toxic.” The article raises fundamental questions about the role of trauma language, therapy, and family in modern American life. What are the consequences of the expanded use of words like “toxic” and “trauma?” What is the purpose of family in 21st-century America? And when is it better to give up on a relationship rather than work through it?
Solidarity Hall - “Trumpism as Grief Culture” by (July 2024)
“But neither our endless wars, decades of middle-class decline, nor even the one million dead in the pandemic have been national-scale occasions for anything like the public rituals by which the Greeks (and other cultures) reconciled themselves to what Judith Butler has called the “grievability” of existence.”
In this recent
post, Elias Crim (a friend of Connective Tissue) makes a case for viewing Trumpism as an outlet for unprocessed, collective grief. He sees this grief transmuted first into anger (January 6th) and then into a new and celebratory form of community (the rallies) that brings closure resembling “tear-filled but happy singing at the wake just after the funeral.” While we’re not a political newsletter, we appreciate an interesting piece of political analysis that connects to the themes of Connective Tissue. Elias does just this - articulating how our lack of collective, communal grieving rituals has created a void to be filled.
The Research
JAMA Network Open - “Screen Media Use and Mental Health of Children and Adolescents” by Schmidt-Persson et al. (July 2024)
In two randomized control trials published in 2024 and 2022, participants exchanged smartphones for flip phones and reduced their screen time to less than three hours per week. Statistically significant results were observed in the following domains:
A 45-minute increase in physical activity per day
Improvements in prosocial behavior among kids
Increases in well-being among adults
These results appear to offer further evidence for the adverse effects of smartphone-based screen time on the social lives of kids and adults alike. And it’s yet another case for why you should consider joining Sam and getting a flip phone :)
→ Read the full journal articles here and here.
The Work
Brookings Metro - “Helping Community Leaders ‘Buy Back the Block’” - Lyneir Richardson & Tracy Hadden Loh (July 2024)
What’s needed to spur local investment and local ownership in disinvested neighborhoods? In this Brookings playbook, the authors identify an opportunity to “buy back the block” by investing in $100,000 to $2,000,000 development projects to create local ownership of commercial real estate in low and moderate income communities. They identify several strategies to make this happen, including:
Targeted tax incentives to build community-serving commercial spaces and third places;
Capacity-building programs to help equip community members to become owners; and
Neighborhood trusts and shared equity models to facilitate broader community ownership.
The playbook concludes with a set of case studies from Baltimore, Cleveland, and Detroit — cities that have put some of these strategies in action. If you’re interested in the intersection between community ownership and community-building, we encourage you to give the playbook a read.
→ Read the full playbook here.