Verified by 
Key points
- Columnist Bret Stephens argues that we have lost the ability to be productively alone or happily together.
- Children learn to play well with others by emphasizing points of commonality, building others up, and apologize when they are wrong.
- Children learn and grow by engaging in sustained activity that requires concentrated attention.
- Leisure and play are the most effective ways to engender both types of skills in children.
I was scrolling the New York Times this morning and was struck by conservative pundit Bret Stephen’s discussion with Gail Collins of a concept he called “Together Alone.”
He writes:
"The old togetherness taught people how to negotiate differences in communities they hadn’t chosen for themselves. And the old aloneness often entailed long periods of engaged solitude, like reading a novel or gardening or building a model ship. But the new togetherness allows us to select the communities to which we belong, mostly with people who like what we like, hate what we hate, and never challenge our assumptions. And the new aloneness often means scrolling among endless internet distractions without ever focusing on anything in particular. The result is that we now live in a world where people know neither how to be together nor how to be alone. It’s the ultimate recipe for unhappiness and bad behavior."
I found that concept of being “together alone” fascinating. Although he and fellow pundit Gail Collins used it to think about why all types of social evils—homicides, overdoses, domestic abuse—are on the rise, I think it is also applicable to thinking about bullying, social networks, and successful soccer teams.
How to be together
One of the cornerstones of civil society is belonging to social groups with people who are different from us. One of the strongest arguments made for mandatory public schools was not that it would teach poor children to read. Rather, it was argued that bringing all children from a community together would help them learn a common set of values and figure out how to work together.
Research has shown that heterogeneous civic groups—scouting, 4H, bowling teams, bands, Little League—tend to increase friendships among children from different economic, social, and class backgrounds. Heterogeneous groups create solidarity by prioritizing a common shared interest or goal that requires everyone to work together (Sherif, 1954, 1958, 1961).
Religion, politics, and money
From my own observations, I would note that the old maxim that one does not discuss religion, politics, or money in polite society helps make heterogeneous groups work. This is particularly important if you want the group to work together for a long time. Human Resource departments often discourage discussions of politics or religion at work.
Why? Because nothing stirs passion like those topics. When you need to work together over the long haul, you need to get along—you can’t just walk away.
I belong to a large contra dance band with members ranging from bricklayers to bank presidents. We share a love of traditional dance music. We do not talk politics because we need to play together for years.
When politics comes up, you can see people stopping themselves and changing the subject. Not because we have a rule about it (we are much too anarchic for that). But because we know that discussing it would undermine our solidarity. So we mostly want just bang out another fiddle tune. My dog training class operates on similar principles.
Kids in school, sports, and clubs need to build skills and relations that they can maintain over the long term. Unlike social media, they can’t just scroll away when something goes wrong. And trolls are never well-received.
How can you help kids learn these skills?
- Teach them to find and foster points of commonality.
- Model giving sincere, spontaneous compliments that build social bonds.
- Help kids to build up others. It makes them more likable and builds more bridges than knocking someone else down.
- Encourage kids to be grateful, to say please and thanks, and to apologize when they’ve made a mistake.
How to be alone
How many people became avid readers because they were really bored and picked up and stuck with a book when there was nothing else to do? Then fell in love? I know my son’s reading breakthrough happened with Calvin and Hobbes in the backseat of our car on a long, long drive to Oma and Opa. My husband became a reader when he had chickenpox and no TV. For me, it was finishing my work early in the classroom and having a choice between reading or staring out the window.
Drawing, reading, playing an instrument, and training a dog all require sustained attention. Encourage cool hobbies! Scaffold—help them a little and let them do it on their own—and follow their lead and interests.
Developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner argues that child development is optimized when children engage in sustained activities that can grow as they do. So we begin with simple Lego models and develop increasingly complex structures. Tap dancing begins with rudimentary clicking and becomes increasingly well-defined as we build our skills. And if those sustained activities sometimes involve someone we love—someone who is “crazy” about us—all the better.
Screen time
Does your child want to play with their screen? Go with it. Encourage screen time that requires sustained attention. In elementary school, my eldest son spent months making animated cartoons using a simple drawing program and QuickTime. My youngest spends hours developing character sheets and building worlds for multi-player games.
I will voice in the contrarian opinion here that there is nothing inherently wrong with being on a screen. People write novels on computers. They make art on computers. They edit videos on computers.
What makes screen time particularly harmful is—as Stephens says—scrolling without purpose. Siloing. Consuming rather than engaging in activities that allow you to create and grow. And engaging in the worst kinds of anti-social behaviors in which people engage in real life.
As a parent, then, focus less on how much time your child spends on the screen and more on what is being done with screens. And don’t forget to complement time on screens with other forms of time alone—walking, cooking, pet care—and time with others.
Productive leisure
Play is the work of childhood. Playing together and playing alone both build skills kids can take with them throughout their life. It can help them build happiness. It may also help us all get along a little better.
