A Well-Cited Rant

Something is going wrong

Something is going wrong with how we live together. Loneliness, depression, anxiety, and deaths of despair are rising across the developed world.¹ Rates of friendship, trust, and civic participation are falling.² People have fewer close friends, fewer confidants, fewer people they can call in a crisis.³ Whole generations are growing up without the dense web of adults, rituals, and belonging that earlier generations took for granted, and young people are now reporting the lowest levels of happiness and connection ever recorded.⁴ In Canada, the statistics are particularly grim. Our happiness decline among the young has been steeper than almost anywhere else measured.⁴ Six in ten Canadians report little or no sense of community.⁵

Why it’s happening

The institutions that once carried this weight have receded, often for good reasons but at real cost. Over the last half-century, the fabric of everyday community has thinned dramatically: the big things that once offered shared identity and purpose, like organized religion and the sense of a common national project, and the smaller ones, like the clubs, unions, lodges, and neighbourhoods that held people’s lives together.⁶ In an honest effort to make institutions more truthful, more inclusive, and less coercive, we’ve also lost the sturdy foundations of belonging and support they once offered. Much of that work was necessary, but too often nothing of real substance has replaced them and now many are living with far less community than they need to be well.

Technology has filled the vacuum, and poorly. Screens and algorithms now soak up the hours people used to spend with each other. They imitate connection just well enough to keep us scrolling, and the companies behind them make more money the longer they can keep us at home.⁷ Every year more of life migrates onto devices, and the real thing keeps slipping away.

The material conditions of ordinary life are squeezing community out. Across Canadian cities, the cost of a home has outrun wages for two decades, and rent eats a share of income that would have been unthinkable to our parents.⁸ People living in small apartments have nowhere to host a dinner, run a book club, or gather a dozen friends for a holiday. The front porches, dining rooms, backyards, and spare bedrooms where community used to form have been priced out of many people’s lives. And what people have left to spend on each other after housing is shrinking too. Dinner out with friends, the trip to see family, the league registration fee: the small economic acts that ordinary community is made of are getting harder to afford. People are losing the means to gather along with the room.

We’re losing our default and third spaces. Often as a combination of the previous factors, cafes, pubs, libraries, places of worship, community halls, campsites, etc., where people used to gather without a plan are thinning out. Some have closed, others have grown too expensive to linger in, and some survive only as facsimiles on a screen. What’s left tends to be somewhere where careful planning is necessary. Or you buy something and leave. Not places to just be, to run into people, and to belong.⁹

The world is getting harder and less secure. This one is big enough to need a section of its own, so more on this in a moment…

Who is bearing this

Children. Children are growing up in worlds that have shrunk around them. The unscheduled afternoons, the freedom to roam, and the wider circle of adults who knew a kid by name (neighbours, coaches, friends’ parents) have all thinned dramatically. Today’s kids spend more time indoors, on screens, and under direct adult supervision than any cohort in living memory. Childhood has largely been pulled out of the neighbourhood, into the home and onto the device. The mental health data is catching up to what that costs.¹⁰

Young people. The generation now coming of age is reporting the lowest happiness and connection ever measured, and the decline has been sharpest in Canada.⁴ They live more of their social lives through screens than anyone, date through apps, work remotely from bedrooms, and know the gathering places of earlier generations mostly as something their grandparents talk about. They often don’t need to be shown the loneliness statistics, because they are living them most acutely.

Couples. Couples are being asked to be each other’s everything: best friend, confidant, co-parent, social organizer, emotional ballast through every hard stretch, all concentrated into one relationship because there is no longer a community around it to absorb any of the load.¹¹ The strain shows up as unhappiness that couples blame on each other, when really no two people were ever meant to be a village. What many couples are missing is not a better partner but everyone else.

Parents. Today’s parents are trying to give their children the things they remember from their own childhoods while meeting standards no previous generation was asked to meet: intensive, enriching, always-on parenting, measured against curated images on social media of what other parents are doing.¹² They are doing all of this in smaller homes, further from family, with less paid leave and more expensive childcare, and with less community to share the load.¹³ So parents today are often exhausted, anxious, and isolated, feeling like they’re struggling at a job that was never meant to be done alone.

Seniors. For seniors, the world that held people in old age has quietly dissolved: the church that noticed when you didn’t show up, the lodge or the legion where you had a role to play, the neighbourhood you’d lived in for forty years, the adult children a short drive away rather than three time zones. Loneliness in old age used to be an accident of circumstance, like outliving a spouse or losing mobility. Too often, it is becoming the default condition of growing old.¹⁴

What people have tried, and why it isn’t enough

People are searching. They throw themselves into clubs, recreation leagues, outdoor and fitness communities, online groups, and hobby scenes, looking for something deeper and coming away with real but partial belonging. These spaces can be wonderful but they often aren’t quite enough. They don’t mark the big moments, they don’t show up when life falls apart, and they don’t offer anywhere to stand on the things that matter most. And crucially, they tend to fade away when participation is encumbered by health or finances.¹⁵

Others have taken the problem seriously enough to build something from scratch. The last century is full of intentional communities of every stripe — communes, back-to-the-land settlements, utopian villages, secular congregations — with far more unsuccessful examples than successful ones. They often ask more than an ordinary life can give, or too little to hold people together once the novelty fades. And without real structure, sound governance principles, clear expectations, and ways to work through conflict, they come apart. Or worse, they get co-opted by charismatic leadership more concerned with its own power and standing than with the people it gathered.¹⁶ Less intense options like co-housing can be amazing, but often run into the same problems of affordability and accessibility that squeeze community out everywhere else.

When the places people try can’t hold them, the need itself doesn’t go away. Belonging is fundamental to the human condition, and when healthy communities don’t meet the need, unhealthy ones will. Extremist movements, conspiracy communities, and the politics of grievance and division are finding fertile ground right now for a reason.

It’s likely to get harder before it gets easier

All of this is happening against an even more worrying backdrop. We are living into a polycrisis: climate change accelerating,¹⁷ inequality widening,¹⁸ democratic institutions strained,¹⁹ and a wave of technological change that stands to enrich a small number of people at the profound expense of enormous numbers of workers.²⁰ Jobs and whole fields built around the values we hold are being defunded, dismantled, or politically targeted.²¹ Much of this isn’t accidental. The forces that isolate and deplete us are organized, well funded, and in many circumstances, overtly hostile to those values.²²

There is a weight and momentum to all of this. Whether by design or by drift, the pressures on ordinary lives are likely to intensify before they ease. Work may get less stable, summers harder, headlines worse. That is by no means the end of the story, but it is the world we’ll be living in for some time.

Why we exist

Somewhere you can meet people who share your values. Somewhere you can just show up, no plans or invitations needed, and know there will be people glad to see you. Somewhere in person and off the screen. Somewhere that knows your kids’ names and misses you when you’re away. Somewhere to find the friendships that could last your whole life, or maybe even the person you’ll build one with.

Somewhere to navigate the new chapters and hard decisions alongside people who genuinely care how it goes for you. Somewhere that notices when you’re struggling and offers to help. Somewhere that stands with you when life gets truly hard: through the illness, the loss, the stretch you could not have carried alone. And somewhere you can be part of that network for others, and feel the deep meaning of contributing to a community that’s there for you.

Somewhere you and your partner can belong together, with a community around you so that neither of you is asked to be the other’s everything. Somewhere that shares some of the weight of raising your children, so you never have to carry it alone.

Somewhere to celebrate the beauty and wonder of being alive, and to mark the biggest moments of your life among people who know your story. Somewhere belonging never depends on who you are, what you can afford to give or your level of ability.

A place that answers to you and every other member equally, that no one can buy or sell out from under you. Something you can participate in without overturning your life. Governed democratically, grounded in shared values, with power held accountable to you, where expectations are clear and conflict is worked through honestly.

A place to be young in and find your people. A place to grow old in, where growing older means being held and honoured, where there is still a role that’s yours and friendly faces glad you’re in it, and where you will never slip quietly out of sight. A place you can bring your friends, your family, your neighbours, knowing they’ll be welcomed the way you were. A place whose songs and stories and traditions you help build, something bigger than yourself that may one day outlast you and be richer for your part in it. And maybe a place you can pass down to your children, so they never have to fight for community.

Somewhere you can stand on the things that matter most, shoulder to shoulder in an increasingly challenging world, so you never have to face it alone. And someday, we hope, a place where you can help make things better.

Notes

1. Statistics Canada, “Study: Mental disorders and access to mental health care” (2023) — the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder among Canadians doubled between 2012 and 2022, and major depressive episodes rose from 4.7% to 7.6%, with the largest increases among young people; Public Health Agency of Canada, Opioid- and Stimulant-related Harms in Canada (2025); Statistics Canada, Canadian Social Survey: Loneliness in Canada (2021).
2. Statistics Canada, Quality of Life Indicator: Trust in Others, Canadian Social Survey 2022–2024; Robert D. Putnam, “The Strange Disappearance of Civic America,” The American Prospect (1996), on long-run declines in civic participation and social trust.
3. “The Decline in American Friendship,” American Enterprise Institute (2024); “Six in Ten Canadians Surveyed Have Little or No Sense of Community,” YMCA Canada / Angus Reid Forum (2024).
4. “Canada’s Happiness Decline Hits Young People the Hardest,” C.D. Howe Institute (2024); World Happiness Report 2024.
5. YMCA Canada / Angus Reid Forum, “Six in Ten Canadians Surveyed Have Little or No Sense of Community” (2024).
6. Robert D. Putnam, “The Strange Disappearance of Civic America,” The American Prospect (1996) — documenting declines of roughly 25–50% in membership across church groups, labour unions, fraternal organizations, and school-service groups over three decades; Statistics Canada, “Religiosity in Canada and its evolution from 1985 to 2019” (2021) — religious affiliation in Canada fell from 90% to 68%, and monthly participation in group religious activities nearly halved (43% to 23%), between 1985 and 2019.
7. U.S. Surgeon General, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation (2023) — documenting the sharp decline in time spent on in-person social engagement as more of daily life moved onto screens, and technology’s role in displacing real-world connection; on platforms engineered to maximize engagement because attention is the business model: “Whistleblower testifies Facebook chooses profit over safety,” CBC News (2021).
8. Statistics Canada, Research to Insights: Perspectives on Affordability and Inequality (2025); Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation housing affordability data.
9. Devika Rao, “The unfortunate, ongoing disappearance of ‘third places,’” The Week (March 2024).
10. Peter Gray, David F. Lancy, and David F. Bjorklund, “Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Well-being: Summary of the Evidence,” Journal of Pediatrics 260 (2023), on the decades-long decline in children’s freedom to play, roam, and act independently of adult supervision as a primary cause of the rise in childhood anxiety, depression, and self-harm; U.S. Surgeon General, Protecting Youth Mental Health advisory (2021).
11. Eli J. Finkel, Chin Ming Hui, Kathleen L. Carswell, and Grace M. Larson, “The Suffocation of Marriage: Climbing Mount Maslow Without Enough Oxygen,” Psychological Inquiry 25, no. 1 (2014), on the historical shift in which spouses are now expected to meet psychological, emotional, and self-actualization needs once distributed across wider social networks; U.S. Surgeon General, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community (2023).
12. Pew Research Center, Parenting in America Today (2023) — most parents say parenting is harder than they expected and rank their children’s mental health as their top worry; Gaëlle Venard et al., “Parenting Under Pressure: Associations between Perceived Social Pressure and Parental Involvement among Mothers and Fathers,” Journal of Child and Family Studies 33 (2024), on the pressure to be a perfect parent — felt most acutely by mothers — and the intensive-parenting norms conveyed through media and social media.
13. U.S. Surgeon General, Parents Under Pressure advisory (2024); Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, “The price is not right (yet): $10-a-day child care falling short of target” — on childcare costs that remain far above target in most Canadian cities despite fee-reduction programs.
14. Statistics Canada, “A look at loneliness among seniors” (2023) — finding that 19% of Canadians aged 65+ reported loneliness, and that seniors who never married (29%), were widowed (31%), or were separated/divorced (32%) were more than twice as likely to report being lonely as those married or in common-law relationships (13%); National Seniors Council, Who’s at risk and what can be done about it? A review of the literature on the social isolation of different groups of seniors (2017).
15. On how leisure-based and activity-based social ties depend on continued participation: Pilar Domínguez-Lara et al., “Loneliness and disability: A systematic review of loneliness conceptualization and intervention strategies,” Frontiers in Psychology (2022), on environmental barriers to leisure activity as drivers of loneliness; Megan C. Janke et al., “Leisure Barriers Among Older Adults in Low-Income Housing” (2020), on how income-based participation barriers correlate with loneliness and isolation. On the related phenomenon of “athletic identity foreclosure,” in which lives organized around physical activity become structurally fragile at injury, aging, or other forced cessation: Mary Wertheim et al., “Mental Health and Involuntary Retirement from Sports Post-Musculoskeletal Injury in Adult Athletes: A Systematic Review” (2023). On the elevated suicide rates documented in mountain and resort communities organized around outdoor recreation — the so-called “Paradise Paradox”: Colorado School of Public Health, “Mental Health in the Mountains” (2020).
16. On communities that ask too little — the rise and quiet decline of the Sunday Assembly’s secular congregations, and anthropologist Richard Sosis’s research finding that communities asking real commitment of their members far outlast those that don’t (“If it’s ‘come and go as you wish,’ that’s not going to work”): Faith Hill, “They Tried to Start a Church Without God. For a While, It Worked,” The Atlantic (2019). On how intentional communities fail for organizational reasons — weak governance, unclear agreements, unmanaged conflict, burnout — rather than lack of idealism: Alexa Clay, “Like start-ups, most intentional communities fail — why?,” Aeon (2017); on charismatic, authoritarian leadership as the pivot by which idealistic communities turn coercive: Elizabeth Yuko, “Cult or Commune? How Utopian Communities Turn Dangerous,” Rolling Stone (2016).
17. “2024 Global Temperatures Were Unprecedented,” Carbon Brief (2025); IPCC, Sixth Assessment Report.
18. “Income Inequality Hit Record High at Start of 2025,” Statistics Canada / CBC News (2025); Oxfam Canada, Canada’s Wealth Inequality Report (2025).
19. International IDEA, Global State of Democracy 2025; V-Dem Institute, Democracy Report 2026: Unraveling the Democratic Era?; Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2026: The Growing Shadow of Autocracy.
20. “AI is Already Taking White-Collar Jobs,” CNBC (2025); World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025 — projecting 92 million jobs displaced by 2030.
21. On the dismantling of values-aligned work across multiple sectors and countries — in Canada, the Carney government’s Budget 2025 plan to eliminate roughly 28,000 federal public service positions by 2029, including approximately 840 at Environment and Climate Change Canada: Catherine Morrison, “Here’s where 15,000 federal public service jobs will be cut over 3 years,” CTV News (2026); Public Service Alliance of Canada, “Federal cuts hit core services as thousands of PSAC members receive affected notices” (2026). On Canadian nonprofit sector strain: Imagine Canada, “Budget 2025: Progress for Some, but No Plan for the Nonprofit Sector that Holds Canada Together” (2025). On the dismantling of publicly funded science in the United States — more than 25,000 people gone from federal science agencies and some 5,300 research grants frozen or terminated in 2025: “US science after a year of Trump: what has been lost and what remains,” Nature (2026). On the shutdown of American humanitarian-aid work: “Almost all USAID workers will be pulled off the job worldwide,” PBS News (2025).
22. On contemporary authoritarianism as an organized, well-funded, transnational network rather than a scatter of unrelated national trends: Anne Applebaum, “The Bad Guys Are Winning,” The Atlantic (2021). On the decades-long, billionaire-funded campaign to reshape politics against egalitarian values: Jane Mayer, “Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging a War Against Obama,” The New Yorker (August 30, 2010). Closer to home, on the oil-funded religious populism of the Canadian far right: J. McLean, E. Laxer, and E. Peker, “Taking Alberta Back: Faith, Fuel, and Freedom on the Canadian Far Right,” Religions 15, no. 10 (2024), profiling the Take Back Alberta movement and its role in Premier Danielle Smith’s rise; on that movement’s finances, Take Back Alberta and its founder were fined more than $120,000 by Elections Alberta for violations including accepting contributions from outside Alberta and Canada and concealing donor details: “Activist group Take Back Alberta and founder fined $120K by elections agency,” CBC News (2025).