There's a crisis of singleness that hasn't been present in much, although not all, of human history.
Home ownership is way down. At various points throughout human history it was common for people to own their own homes.
Most people have very little autonomy in their day to day work. In the past most people worked on small scale farms and cottage industries where they didn't have layers upon layers of middle managers micromanaging them.
I resonate with the rest of your post - I do think having a connection to society is vital, and I also think that the US has become too much of a me-first, get-ahead-at-all-costs hustle culture that devalues social bonds. But I see people still forming very deep cultural identities.
I also agree with you that pride in one's accomplishments and a sense of purpose is important and home ownership is ONE way to achieve that - to have control over at least that facet of your life.
But it's far from the only one.
Lenocracy. The first part of that word comes from leno, the Latin term for a pimp.
https://www.ecosophia.net/beyond-lenocracy/
Like most of Greers writing, it makes you think and also wonder what is in the water at his house.
The service economy is all about taking a whopping cut of everyone else's work, and it seems like venture capital is only interested in funding companies who will be able to do that. Uber, Doordash, Task Rabbit, the App Store, etc.
Never have I come across an author I simultaneously agree and disagree with.
In other words, it didn't start with social media. Rather, social media exacerbate what was already happening for decades at this point.
Aside from this being one hell of a subjective thing to measure vs. the past, and aside from it not necessarily being a bad thing (cultural identity has been used for centuries by demagogues to foment grotesque acts of religious and political violence, compared to what you see in many modern pluralistic liberal societies), it's also a very minor thing compared to all the colossal negatives of life in the past.
We can find our own voluntary cultural associations and create connections to society in all sorts of ways. Modern living, modern technology and modern conveniences don't hinder this. If anything, they make it easier. In a ridiculous irony considering the occupations of so many people on HN, and their lifestyles, there's a lot of hypocritical hate for social media and digital connectivity, but one part of it that's unfounded is the idea that it can't be used by those who are creative for expanding their own personally chosen connections to certain communities more widely.
As for the crisis of singleness, that's more complex, but maybe no longer forcing younger people into marriages of convenience and religious prudery about how the neighbors might be "scandalized" has something to do with fewer marriages. I see little wrong with that. The society I live in pursues marriage less than at any time in its history, but at least today you see nowhere near the frequency of young men and women being shotgunned into youthful marriages for absurd religious and social reasons that later lead to those marriages being abusive, unhappy and stagnant.
I agree with worries about your point on home ownership, but like anything else, it too has its caveats and complexities. One of these being that many younger people want to live in places that are trendy but also own their own property there. Market pricing for high-demand areas isn't something that can be magically wished away.
Finally, >Most people have very little autonomy in their day to day work. In the past most people worked on small scale farms and cottage industries where they didn't have layers upon layers of middle managers micromanaging them.
I'm sorry, have you actually read about how many hours people working in cottage industries and farming in particular (what the vast majority of people did for a living before industrialization) had to pull off just to stay afloat? I'd be willing to bet that they'd pick shorter hours with a manager or two over that existence.
On the other hand, the amount of autonomy and freedom an average modern person in the developed world today has is vastly greater than it was in this past existence you seem to be idealizing without closer examination. This applies even if you include all the middle managers you like over this modern worker's head. This is the case because, very importantly, it's their free time outside of work that matters most.
It's incredible to think a 17th century farmer of mid 19th century cobbler had more autonomy than a modern white collar worker in, say, Pittsburg, or Oakland California or Lyon, France does today just because you don't like the management culture in which the modern workers work their relatively moderate hours.
You seem to be missing my point about autonomy. Certainly your average peasant was in a much worse economic situation than most modern people and has less human rights. However, they likely also had less moment to moment micromanaging. As long as you deliver your quota at the end of the season, your feudal lord probably isn't dictating your daily work.
Human beings are not purely logical creatures. While from an objective standpoint people are certainly better off today, it's possible that the things that we've given up are more important for subjective emotional/psychological wellbeing.
