Sam Pressler Reconnecting Fragmented Social Lives

American social life is fragmenting at both the individual and societal level. Americans have become less connected to one another and their communities, and the class divide in social connections is large and growing. As a scholar and practitioner of community, connection, and class, Sam Pressler studies this fragmentation, why it’s happening, and how it might be repaired. His research combines quantitative data with in-depth interviews, including his piece on the growing class divide in American civic life and the "Nobody to Call" report on friendship, community, and purpose among men without college degrees. 

Pressler spoke with Reimagining the Economy about his work and offered a perspective which goes well beyond a typical economic approach. Pressler sees deep roots of social fragmentation in American history and society and profound consequences for both individuals and society. But, he believes that with a different set of guiding principles for approaching civic life — translated into policies, practices, activities, and ways of showing up as community members — we can reverse the trends and make our relationships, communities, and society more strongly connected.

Disconnection and division

Pressler’s work explores social fragmentation in a variety of contexts. The easiest way to see the growth in both individual disconnection and class division is in the data on friendships.

Since 1990, far more people report having no close friends, fewer report having at least six close friends, and both changes are more extreme for those without a college degree. In 2024, nearly a quarter of Americans with a high school education or less said that they had no close friends, compared to just 10 percent among Americans with degrees.

Similar patterns show up almost everywhere we look. American social and civic life “has declined by every conceivable measure since the mid-20th century,” and Americans without college degrees are the most affected. Compared to Americans with degrees, those who didn’t go to college have fewer places to gather with neighbors, participate in their communities less, and join community and religious community groups at much lower rates.

The men interviewed for “Nobody to Call” corroborate this finding, with many reporting that they have no close connections. Josiah, one of the interviewees, put it simply: “Except for my family, I don’t regularly do anything with anybody.”

Causes of social fragmentation

What’s behind the growing disconnectedness and division? When approaching this sort of problem, economists tend to isolate individual, direct causes, but Pressler emphasizes deep history and interdependence: “The story of social fragmentation over the last 75 years can’t be isolated from any aspect of the story of America over that time period.”

He highlighted a few of the most important changes since the 1950s and ‘60s, when social and civic life began to decline. The story is one of technology, gender, economy, sorting, and community, all in dynamic interplay with one other. 

• Technology: One of the most important factors is technology. TV, followed by computers, smartphones, and social media, have made entertainment a frictionless substitute for “friction-ful” experiences of community and interpersonal relationships. This time displacement, coupled with its disembedding from place, has undermined our embedded, local connections.  
• Gender: Historically, women have been the backbone of civic life in the U.S., participating at higher rates than men and providing much of the unpaid labor to sustain it. But as women’s labor force participation doubled between the 1950s and 1990s, they had progressively less time to contribute to civic life. Without this “invisible” work to sustain community groups, they started to wither. 
• Economy: As the economy became more globalized and financialized — and private-sector unions declined and worker protections were weakened — a large fraction of stable jobs disappeared and were replaced by precarious, unpredictable work, eroding the material foundations of working-class life and making sustained participation in relationships and community more difficult.
• Sorting: Higher education, built on a vision of a measurable form of “merit,” transformed from a hereditary aristocracy to a "hereditary meritocracy,” and in the process, became the “great sorter” of Americans’ social lives. America’s regions and neighborhoods have become more sorted by class since the mid-20th century, and so too have our schools, workplaces, and community groups. 

This has resulted in what Pressler refers to as the “privatization of community,” where once more accessible forms of community have declined, and what’s taken their place have higher financial and geographic barriers to entry. While the widespread impact of technology has undermined community for all Americans, the changes to our economy and system of higher education has severed the “relational safety net” for many Americans without degrees.  

Consequences of social fragmentation

Social disconnection — fewer friends, less interaction with our neighbors, less community involvement — affects every aspect of our lives. The most immediate effect is the lack of relationships themselves. Relationships are fundamental to our wellbeing, so this may seem obvious, but Pressler often feels compelled to justify their importance as ends in and of themselves, especially in “technocratic circles” where they are often justified based on their connection to economic measures  like economic mobility. While it’s true that relationships affect these outcomes, relationships are first and foremost valuable for their own sake.

There’s also an existential component. Without connections, people feel a lack of meaning and purpose, which came up again and again in the “Nobody to Call” interviews. “Why am I doing all this?” Asks an interviewee named Deion, “I’m just living life, I guess. There’s no bigger thing I can grab onto where I can see a future… I’m just here, just passing by—and that doesn’t sit well with me.”

Economists typically focus on material wellbeing, but relational and existential wellbeing are no less important. So, growing disconnection would be problematic even if there weren’t any other consequences. However, there are material effects which present problems of their own. 

Social networks can be an informal safety net, helping people manage difficult economic circumstances. Pressler’s work shows that, with fewer connections, people without college degrees are less likely to know someone who can give them a ride, loan them $200, or offer them a place to stay if needed.

We also see impacts on people’s health and mortality. Pressler cites research on “deaths of despair”: the rising rate of suicide and health problems from drug and alcohol use among America’s working class, which is closely linked to growing disconnection. As journalist Johann Hari puts it, “The opposite of addiction is connection.”

Societal versus individual

Many in the media talk about social fragmentation as if it is an individual issue with individual-level solutions. For example, public discourse often refers to a “male loneliness crisis,” framing disconnection as a largely individual problem. Even many of the men interviewed for “Nobody to Call” — those most affected by sweeping social changes — blame themselves for their feelings of loneliness.

However, Pressler argues that social fragmentation is a societal issue. Rather than a “male loneliness crisis,” he talks about a “crisis of men without degrees being left alone by society.” He is also quick to counter the prominent narrative of young, disconnected men being bitter and nihilistic. The men Pressler interviewed were eager to make positive contributions and be a part of something bigger than themselves. The limitation is the opportunities society gives them — as he says, “they need to be called in.”

We can see this in their relationships with family. Fathers, uncles, and men with meaningful family connections see these relationships as their core source of purpose in life.  They speak with joy and passion about their desire to raise and mentor the next generation. If given the opportunity to contribute, these men enthusiastically rise to the occasion.

What we can do

If social fragmentation is a societal issue, what can society do about it? Broadly, Pressler encourages researchers, policymakers, and civic leaders to view society not as a machine to be optimized, but as a deeply interconnected ecology. In this view, individuals and institutions cannot be understood as abstractions or in isolation, but rather as an integrated whole.

This leads him to offer a set of guiding principles, inspired by an open letter he recently co-published, for breathing life into our economic and civic lives, alike:

• Make collective decision-making participatory. Along with all the other changes over the last few decades, collective decision-making all the way from the neighborhood level to the national level has become increasingly managerial, controlled, and technocratic — supposedly to rationalize and optimize our decisions. But when decisions are made by a small subset of society, community members are treated as passive recipients and consumers of decisions imposed on them. Inviting in participation can transform residents to become active agents and shapers of their community’s future.
• Prioritize proximity and place. When our civic and economic lives are shaped by those who are neither rooted in nor accountable to the people they serve, people and places become commodified and disposable. But when proximity and place is valued, and leaders and organizations are rooted in the places they serve, it engenders a responsibility and accountability toward the well-being of their particular places. 
• Think of improving growing connections as a generational project. Deep-seated conditions produced over decades will not be resolved overnight, or even with projects over a few years (especially if they are narrowly focused on a small set of quantifiable metrics). Instead, it requires a process of “generational stewardship.” This calls us to “plant trees we won’t sit under” —  building structures anchored in loyalty to our communities and adaptability to their changing needs, and cultivating relationships that will outlast any individual or organization.

These principles can become a framework for building a society of “deep membership,” which can be translated into policies and practices for systems-level actors from local governments, to Chambers of Commerce, to United Ways and YMCAs, to community foundations.