The best place for friendships across class lines to develop are colleges and universities.
, a political scientist at Harvard, offered a sweeping survey of what ailed American society by detailing a steady erosion in the amount of social interaction among people who are not family, close friends or work colleagues—a concept called “social capital”. The withdrawal of Americans from bowling leagues, religious life and volunteering was a symptom of anomie, Mr Putnam argued. It would adversely affect not just the lives of individuals, but also American democracy itself.
Fittingly for the new age of social science, the data come from Facebook—which allows for the kind of sophisticated network analysis that previous generations of scholars could have only dreamed of. The large research team—which includedof Harvard University, Matthew Jackson of Stanford University, and Theresa Kuchler and Johannes Stroebel of New York University—worked with the social-media giant’s proprietary data on 72.
This corroborates findings in other recent large-scale examinations: places in America that are more segregated by race or income seem to give poor kids less of a chance. This can be difficult for policymakers to counteract. The most important institutions for encouraging these friendships seem to be colleges and universities. Only there are poorer students surrounded predominantly by their wealthier peers.
Other classical definitions of social capital like those Mr Putnam employed—such as the extent of civic engagement and the cohesiveness of bonds within social classes—did not appear to be correlated with improved life outcomes. That may prompt a refinement of the theory of social capital. Verifying it has always been difficult. And even though this study is studded with quantitative measures derived from big data, its findings remain largely based on associations and correlations.
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