Real Time: A Community Building Blog

Several years ago the Maine Community Foundation participated in a national survey of nearly 30,000 citizens to measure the levels of civic engagement of Americans. The work was led by Robert Putnam, Harvard professor and author of Bowling Alone.

Putnam’s research suggests there has been a precipitous decline in civic engagement in the last 25 years. In other words, we might be bowling -- just as we were a quarter century ago -- but today we’re bowling alone. Putnam argues that social networks are good things. People who are engaged with one another are more likely to vote, volunteer, and be visibly involved in their community. Civic engagement is not simply important, he states, it’s key to building and sustaining vibrant communities.

In responding to Putnam’s assertions that there’s a decline in civic engagement, critics of his work argued that his research ignored the ways in which technology has been instrumental in connecting us with one another, fundamentally redefining social connectedness. Texting and tweeting might not have replaced bowling leagues or social clubs, but they’re fast becoming the preferred way to communicate. When was the last time your teenager called you on their cell?

I am witness to at least one family with young children that boasts simultaneous in-person and online conversations. My own children, both 30-somethings, rarely use either incoming or outgoing land lines for contacting me. Instead, their messages frequently arrive in the form of texts that I might find on my phone (if I remember to check) three days after the fact. They communicate with their friends and one another using Facebook. When I initiate a phone call to check in, I hear a now familiar refrain, “Mom, if you ever looked at Facebook, you’d know what I’m doing. Check out the video I posted yesterday.”

There is no question that technology is redefining the way in which we communicate and the manner in which we engage with one another and give back to our communities. We contribute to disaster relief by sending text messages from our cell phones. We start movements using Facebook and Twitter. We use Skype to chat with friends and family a world away. Was Putnam right? Are we bowling alone? What do you think?