A Pew Research Center survey of Americans released last year found that the share of people who said they knew all of their neighbors decreased from 2018 to 2025. In a different report on social connection in America, also from last year, 63 percent of respondents said they never got together with their neighbors to improve their community, and only 27 percent said that their neighborhood was close-knit. And in a 2024 survey, about half of people said that they seldom or never spoke with neighbors they didn't know well. The decline in socializing with neighbors has been happening for decades'since about the 1970s, as the sociologist Robert D. Putnam documented in his 2000 book, Bowling Alone. The past couple of months, however, have shown that huge numbers of Americans do love their neighbors'enough to show up in frozen streets, confront armed federal agents, and even risk death. The response to Border Patrol and ICE's presence in Minnesota has prompted one of the greatest mass...
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