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Derek Thompson

@DKThomp

Jan 8

I wrote the cover story of the February issue of The Atlantic. It builds on a lot of reporting I did throughout 2024, and I'm really proud of it.

It’s called: THE ANTI-SOCIAL CENTURY

The thesis: Rising solitude is the most important social fact in American life today. The historic amounts of time that Americans spend alone and in their homes is reshaping the consumer economy—from dining to entertainment to delivery—warping our politics, alienating us from the realities of our neighbors and villages, and changing our very personalities.

Here are the basic facts:

1. In the last few years, in-person socialization has declined, for every demographic group, to its lowest point on record

2. The typical American is now alone more than in any period where we have decent data, going back to at least 1965

3. Americans now spend an extra 99 minutes in their homes compared to 2003—a trend that crept up slowly before the pandemic, before exploding and remaining at a seriously elevated level. As Princeton’s Patrick Sharkey wrote in a 2024 paper, the homebound trend isn't just about remote work. Homebound life has “risen for every subset of the population and for virtually all activities” from eating to praying.

4. America's social depression is far-reaching. The share of adults having dinner or drinks with friends on any given night has declined by more than 30% in the past 20 years. The share of boys and girls who say they meet up with friends almost daily outside school hours has declined by nearly 50%.

I don’t think these trends are simple. In many cases, they’re not even simply bad. (Ordering delivery: totally fine! Eating more meals alone, year after year after year: not so great!) But to see these trends—and their effects on American society—more clearly, I thought this phenomenon needed an anchoring, a naming, a media artifact for people to talk about, even if only to point out that I’m wrong. So, I wrote this.

And here is “The Anti-Social Century,” in full. Gift link! Read and share (and go outside!).

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

“Wait, why not call it THE LONELY CENTURY?”

Great question. I think it might be one of the most important pieces of the essay, and it's also very easily misunderstood, so I want to put it plainly here.

Loneliness is so hot right now. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general of the US, published an 81-page warning on it being an “epidemic” with negative health effects on par with tobacco use. The U.K. has established a minister for loneliness. So has Japan.

But loneliness is complicated. In doses, it's very good. "It is actually a very healthy emotional response to feel some loneliness," the NYU sociologist @EricKlinenberg told me. "That cue is the thing that pushes you off the couch and into face-to-face interaction."

Healthy, lonely people respond to their social isolation by reaching out to friends. What’s happening in this country seems worryingly different. Each year, we seem to be responding to rising aloneness by … spending more time alone. It’s as if our natural instinct to seek the company of others has been short-circuited by a convenience economy that makes it more comfortable and entertaining to spend more (and more and more) time by ourselves.

I’ll leave you with a provocation. If healthy loneliness is the instinct to surround oneself with more people, then America’s problem is not loneliness.

In a strange way, our problem is ... THE OPPOSITE OF LONELINESS.

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Derek Thompson

@DKThomp

Dec 4, 2024

I wrote about the rise of ANTI-ELITE ELITISM and how Trump 2.0 represents a coalition of power, wealth, and fame that has successfully framed its political movement as a populist rebellion

"Populism"—the rhetoric vibe that says the people are good and the elites are bad—is not a set of ideas so much as a costume that any ideology can wear.

And I am very interested in the way that folks like RFK Jr, Musk, Ackman, and Trump—some of the richest and most famous ppl in America, or the world—have demonstrarted the effectiveness of anti-elite frames, even when the speakers themselves are highly elite themselves.

More broadly, I think RFK Jr is just an absolutely fascinating Rosetta Stone for the most important trends in American politics.

1. His vaccine views perfectly represent the fusion of hippie naturalism and anti-govt attitudes that have pushed vaccine skepticism to the right after COVID

2. His long-standing conspiratorial views about institutions perfectly encapsulate the modern GOP, which has become America's anti-institution party.

As @EricLevitz has written, the parties are not only polarized by education. They are starkly dividied by the degree to which they trust established or legacy organizations to do just about anything

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Derek Thompson

@DKThomp

Nov 7, 2024

For the first time since WWII, every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share, via @jburnmurdoch

2024 Democrats are the red dot.

Absolutely critical context to any postmortem.

“This has been a year of global anti-incumbency within a century of American anti-incumbency.”

Let’s not make context the enemy of agency.

I think Dems made substantive errors (esp in urban governance) and strategic errors (running Biden).

But way too much postmortem analysis is all “Democratic ads in Michigan should said …” suggestions and too little context.

Read 5 tweets

Derek Thompson

@DKThomp

Nov 6, 2024

My big-picture explanation for Trump’s crushing victory is this:

This wasn’t the 1st post-pandemic election. It was the 2nd COVID presidential election.

You can’t explain Trump’s across-the-board romp without seeing the ways—obvious and subtle—that the pandemic haunted 2024

1. Inflation was *a part of* the pandemic.

That is, the economic emergency was as global as the health emergency, and nearly as contagious. But while many voters forgave their leaders for COVID, they blamed their leaders for inflation, making this a horrendous year for incumbents worldwide.

Did Harris underperform. I don't think so. Her performance was total normal, adjusted for Biden’s popularity in a year of global anti-incumbency.

2. I think the 2024 election was, for many, an opportunity to protest the perception of pandemic-era excesses.

I don’t think I have as good a grasp on the significance of cultural changes in America—eg, claims of blue states upending society; or Biden admin attempts to regulate speech for public health reasons; or the salience of trans rights to conservative voters. But I think my frame—2024 was the 2nd COVID election— could easily extend to the cultural realm, too.

Read 7 tweets

Derek Thompson

@DKThomp

Aug 5, 2024

I wrote about the urban family exodus.

America's biggest and richest cities are losing children at an alarming rate.

From 2020 to 2023, the number of kids under 5 declined by
- almost 20% in NYC
- about 15% in LA, SF, Chicago, and St Louis
- >10% in NoLA, Philly, Honolulu

This exodus is not merely the result of past COVID waves.

Even at the slower rate of out-migration since 2021, several counties—Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—are on pace to lose 50% of their under-5 child population by the mid-2040s. Insane.

Progressives have a family problem.

It's not the "childless cat lady" problem that Vance etc want to talk about. It's an urban policy.

Progressives preside over counties that young families are leaving. And that's bad.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

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Derek Thompson

@DKThomp

May 21, 2024

All optimism is local.

1. New Fed survey: 72% of Americans say their own finances are "doing at least okay" ... but just 22% say the national economy is good

2. In all 7 swing states, majority say (a) their state’s economy is good, and (b) the nat'l economy is bad

https://x.com/DKThomp/status/1744856462571053203

"Everything is terrible but I'm fine" has a lot of parts to it.

But one part of it is ppl have direct experience of their own life but draw impressions of the world from media, which is negative-biased and getting more negative over time.

https://x.com/DKThomp/status/1744856462571053203

More here from @bpmehlman: brucemehlman.substack.com/p/six-chart-su…

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