Sen. Chris Murphy Wants the Government To Help You Make Friends
Elizabeth Nolan Brown for reason.com
(Oscar Carrascosa Martinez/Westend61 GmbH/Newscom)
Is there any social issue that elected officials don’t think they can solve?
Loneliness is a highly complex phenomenon, produced by an interplay of cultural components and personal psychological attributes. One senator thinks he can fix it with bureaucracy and “public awareness.”
On Tuesday, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy announced the introduction of his “National Strategy for Social Connection,” a bill that would create “a federal office to combat the growing epidemic of American loneliness, develops anti-loneliness strategies, and fosters best practices to promote social connection,” as Murphy put it.
The idea that the federal government can solve loneliness is naive and laughable. If there is an “epidemic of loneliness” in America—a big if—its causes are surely so diverse that no group of bureaucrats is going to dislodge it. And certainly not with the silly solutions Murphy proposes.
Murphy’s bill would create an “Office of Social Connection Policy to advise the president on loneliness and isolation,” order federal agencies to implement a “national strategy on social connection,” and start a public awareness campaign to educate people about fostering connections.
“Similar to existing national guidelines on nutrition, sleep, and physical activity, the Office would issue research-based best practices on how to better engage and connect with our local communicates,” Murphy’s summary of the bill states.
U.S. nutrition guidelines, of course, have a long history of being ridiculously unscientific and plagued by cronyism. And whatever one thinks about nutrition and physical activity guidelines today, there’s no denying that Americans are massively overweight and way too sedentary. So, I’d hardly call these things models of efficacy.
In fact, national guidelines on how to be less lonely are bound to work about as well as nutrition and physical fitness guidelines have: not at all.
The whole project seems designed to create work for people at federal agencies (and ostensibly good press for Murphy). They would be tasked with coming up with ways to promote “social connection” in areas including “transportation, housing, health, education, and labor,” just like officials across federal agencies are now ordered to consider things like equity, race, and sustainability when designing or enacting any policies. Everything would take a little longer and cost a little more, with likely no discernible difference in the actual lives of Americans.
The most tangible thing Murphy’s plan would do is give more money to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study loneliness—another effort that seems destined to increase government budgets but have little real-world impact on isolation or social connection.
Moving beyond the pointlessness of Murphy’s proposal, there’s also something a little creepy and dystopian about it. The federal government is meant to concern itself with national security and monetary policy, not whether Americans have enough friends.
What’s next, a national trivia-night network? Social wellness screenings on public buses? Federal subsidies for bowling leagues?
The idea that this seems designed to “create work” is valid. Where else are all those social justice, gender studies, etc. suppose to find work. Yet another welfare program created as a Federal agency. After all, regular welfare will not pay enough for these wretches.