Left alone

A reflection on my new report with the Survey Center on American Life: “Disconnected: The Growing Class Divide in American Civic Life”

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I just published “Disconnected: The Growing Class Divide in American Civic Life” alongside

Daniel Cox

at the Survey Center on American Life. It offers a sobering picture of the state of civic opportunity, participation, friendship, and social support in American communities. Below, I share a brief, personal reflection on the research. 

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I still remember the look on my dad’s face. Usually red with some sort of emotion, he stood there expressionless and pale to the point of translucence. 

He had just found out that one of his best friends from high school had passed away. He died around Thanksgiving time. But it wasn’t until his sister visited New Jersey around Christmas time to check on him that anyone knew he was dead. He died alone — without a job, without a partner, and without close friends — and no one knew he was dead for nearly a month. 

After my dad heard the news, he kept shaking his head and saying to himself: “I can’t believe he was there for a month. I can’t believe he was there for a month.” 

I sensed that the loss of his friend in this way was not just an emotional wound but a spiritual wound. Accompaniment is a fundamental human need. We need the accompaniment of others to survive. And we need to accompany others to live into our calling as family members, friends, and neighbors. 

My dad yearned to be there for his friend. It was too late.

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Much has been made about loneliness over the past few years. But loneliness puts the problem on the individual and absolves us of our collective responsibility to accompany others. It’s almost as if we’re saying: “You are feeling lonely; therefore, you should make friends.”

The real problem isn’t an individualized feeling of loneliness. The real problem is an aloneness that has deep structural and cultural underpinnings. Too many Americans have been left alone, especially Americans without college degrees like my dad’s friend.

This is one of the major takeaways from the report that I just published along with Daniel Cox at the Survey Center on American Life. Based on a survey of more than 6,500 Americans, we find that 24 percent of Americans without degrees — and 35 percent of Black Americans without degrees — report having no close friends. This represents an eightfold increase in aloneness since 1990, when only three percent of Americans without degrees said they had no close friends.

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Data like this can have an unintended dehumanizing effect, but it’s worth staying with the very human implications of this point. Nearly a quarter of Americans without degrees have no close friends. 

That’s no close friends to pick them up when they’ve fallen on hard times. That’s no close friends with whom to share stories and heartfelt conversations. And that’s no close friends to accompany them through life’s final moments. 

Too many of our neighbors have been left alone.

This isn’t a crisis of individual loneliness; it’s a crisis of collective accompaniment. This isn’t their problem; it’s ours.

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