And for an additional proof of this decline in civic participation, one needs only point to decline in rates of voting. For me these things, too, have had as much impact as television, and all mesh into the framework of increasing personal isolation and apolitical passivity. Putnam uses the label, Bowling Alone, because he wants people to recognize that the trend of disengagement from civic life is not limited to participation in do-gooder organizations like the League for Women Voters. The mystery concerns the disappearance of both social capital and civic engagement in America. Figures like this are also bad news for American democracy.
Weekly church going is down.
Union membership has declined by more than half since the mid-1950s. PTA membership has fallen from 12 million in 1964 to 7 million. Community in its traditional sense is people who reside within or share a specific geographical location confronting one another with differing ideas and working out solutions by compromise and consensus. With such things as the Internet, these traditional limitations of community are breaking down. Likewise, the World Wide Web is gaining in a similar way.