Why Liberalism Failed

by Patrick J. Deneen

Turkle reminds us that the root of the word “community” means literally “to give among each other” and argues that such a practice requires “physical proximity” and “shared responsibilities.” The growing presence of social media fosters relationships that avoid either of these constitutive elements of community, replacing that thicker set of shared practices with the thinner and more evanescent bonds of “networks.” Turkle is not simply nostalgic—she acknowledges the difficult and even awful aspects of community in earlier times. She describes the community in which her grandparents lived, for instance, as “rife with deep antagonisms.” But the same thickness that gave rise to such contentious relations, she writes, also inspired people to take care of each other in times of need. Turkle fears that we are losing not only that experience but also the capacity to form the thick bonds that constitute community, and that our attraction to social media at once undermines these bonds and provides a pale simulacrum to fill the void. Social media become ersatz substitutes for what they destroy, and Turkle seems pessimistic about the prospects for slowing this transformation. At best we can try to limit our children’s access to the internet, but Turkle seems resigned to dim prospects of fundamentally changing the current dynamic.3