A better family

What are we like? The Times' Sam Roberts takes a look at what the Census Bureau's 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States tells us about ourselves.

The article's chock full of interesting conclusions about what we eat, what we do, and how we spend our leisure time. Unfortunately, at least one of the article's central observations is dead wrong:

“The large master trend here is that over the last hundred years, technology has privatized our leisure time,” said Robert D. Putnam, a public policy professor at Harvard and author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.”

“The distinctive effect of technology has been to enable us to get entertainment and information while remaining entirely alone,” Mr. Putnam said. “That is from many points of view very efficient. I also think it’s fundamentally bad because the lack of social contact, the social isolation means that we don’t share information and values and outlook that we should.”

Huh? The entire trend of the Internet in recent years is toward social networking and exchange sites. Heck, that's all blogs are about!

Putnam is nuts if he thinks society is getting more isolated--the bucolic days he harkens back to were noteworthy for the fact that people of different races and classes never mixed. Thus, even if there was more face-to-face exchange, it was the choir talking to the choir--incest, if you well.

In addition, much of that 'exchange' was involuntary--people in small towns often hate being there but have (or feel like they have) no choice. Under those circumstances, killing time on Saturday night at the local bar was unlikely to lead to the kind of personal growth Putnam's looking for.

Whereas now...

Adolescents and adults now spend, on average, more than 64 days a year watching television, 41 days listening to the radio and a little over a week using the Internet. Among adults, 97 million Internet users sought news online last year, 92 million bought a product, 91 million made a travel reservation, 16 million used a social or professional networking site and 13 million created a blog.

“The demand for information and entertainment seems almost insatiable,” said James P. Rutherfurd, executive vice president of Veronis Suhler Stevenson, the media investment firm whose research the Census Bureau cited.

Mr. Rutherfurd said time spent with such media increased to 3,543 hours last year from 3,340 hours in 2000, and is projected to rise to 3,620 hours in 2010. The time spent within each category varied, with less on broadcast television (down to 679 hours in 2005 from 793 hours in 2000) and on reading in general, and more using the Internet (up to 183 hours from 104 hours) and on cable and satellite television.

Anyone who decries how kids today are dumber or more withdrawn than than used to be is grinding an ax.

It's like people saying schools are worse today than they used to be--I always feel like adding, you mean back in the day when they were segregated? Maybe it's just me, but I think the value of a bunch of white kids knowing Greek or Latin isn't quite worth as much to them as living in a society where large numbers of people aren't beaten in the streets. I know from a societal point of view which world is better.

Kids today know waaaay more about the rest of the world for the simple reason that the Internet gives them access. Some kid in the 60s had no way of interacting with his/her counterparts in Europe or Asia, except for finding a pen pal (which was limited to periodic contact with one person).

In addition, kids today write way more than they used to, and read way more than before. That's all MySpace is; it lets everyone express themselves, not just the artistic or the driven.

The result isn't always genius... but it's better than whatever a bunch of white guys huddled down at the local bowling alley is likely to produce. Putnam et al need to take an honest look at life in 2006 for what it really is, rather than looking at it as if they were stuck in the 60s.

Uncredited photo of Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker found in various places online.