I don’t think it has much to do with the pandemic, although that might have served as a catalyst.<p>The real driver seems to me to be the internet. Never before in history was it possible that even two people living together as husband and wife can be living in two totally different universes.<p>Yet this is precisely what’s happening today, thanks to Facebook, WhatsApp, video on demand, click driven news and the good old filter bubbles. Social cohesion erosion, seen in that way, is the inverse of the web’s ever increasing push towards more choice, personalization and individuality.<p>It’s like I dating. If you can always say “next”, all possibility for depth and growth and commitment evaporates. In fact, these things start to look like old fashioned justifications used by people who just didn’t have that choice.<p>And so it is today even with news. If I don’t like what I see, I do not have to be tolerant, or expose my own ideas to the possibility of being questioned, eroded or proven false. I can simply block the offending outlet and instead consume only content that agrees with my own beliefs.<p>Whether this is good or bad is anyone’s guess. But it seems to be the general direction in which things are going.
Sometimes I learn the name for something and think "I've noticed that thing before but never had a name for it, but this fits!". I'd never heard the term 'social cohesion erosion' before reading this article but honestly, it fits my mental model of how things have been going over the past couple of years.