constructing the broken pieces of an iden-
tity from a series of fragmented memories.
The result is broken marriages, broken
politics, broken cities, a broken culture,
and broken human beings. Forgetting, as
it turns out, hurts” (O’Malley, 2018, Anti-
phon 22.2, p. 127). In slowly losing one’s
narratives of family, community, and faith,
the individual is left seeking a new identity
and to be accepted into a new social com-
munity or local parish—a task not as easy
as the American myth of individualism
makes it out to be.
By physically moving (and in other
ways), Americans are “conforming” to
the longstanding and ingrained cultural
process of upward social mobility, legiti-
mized by the American value of individu-
alism. I say “conforming”—because as the
late sociologist Robert Bellah often com-
mented—in “doing one’s own thing” one
self-destruct. It is a developmental trajec-
tory filled with social ritual practices of
detachment, disengagement, separation,
and isolation.
The discipline of sociology has re-
searched the consequences of social dis-
connection by compiling a body of work
based on Emile Durkheim’s question (a
founding father of sociology)—what is the
optimal level of social connectedness?
Initially, Durkheim’s question motivated
many sociologists to study immigrants
as most experience a severe rupture of
their social bonds. Many of these stud-
ies document the consequences of such
separation as mostly detrimental to indi-
vidual and communal well-being. Indeed,
Durkheim found a correlation between
mobility and suicide: those who are more
mobile experience less robust social con-
nections (loss of community) and are
“THE PERVASIVENESS OF DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA
IN THE WORLD OF YOUNG PEOPLE IS EVIDENT. . . .
THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE LIVES OF
YOUNG PEOPLE CANNOT BE UNDERSTATED
is not being different or radical but mere-
ly “conforming” to the American cultural
value system of individualism (for most
are doing the same thing). Ironically, this
whole process of familial, social, and spiritual
disconnection and dispersion sets one on an
unconscious quest for exactly what one has
walked away from—family, parish community,
tradition, ritual practices, a place to belong.
Why do we do it then? Because Ameri-
can individualism and consumerism per-
petuate the devastating message “do your
own thing,” which often means physically
moving away from family, community, and
consequently many traditional rituals
that have shaped and formed us. Indeed,
in such a cultural context the anthropol-
ogist Bradd Shore makes the bold claim
that the developmental trajectory of the
middle-class American family is about to
10
hence more likely to commit suicide. So-
ciology has something to say to youth in
that sociology is not merely a descriptive
enterprise but also a highly political one
in that it diagnoses and suggests correc-
tives to the ills of society, primarily the
loss of social cohesion or community and
the multitude of forces that threaten to
disintegrate the very possibility of the “so-
cial or ecclesial.”
Durkheim spent a lifetime arguing that
the “social” or communal is a SALVE
to the traumas of liquid modernity and
a place of solace in which individuals
could feel themselves protected and mor-
ally unified. So, Durkheim already was
reflecting on the death of the social in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Specifically, he believed physically mov-
ing away from one’s tribe was a laceration
Sacred Heart Major Seminary | Mosaic | Fall 2018
to the social body—moving leaves the
communal body bleeding. Mobility is a
laceration because dispersed members
are unable to gather and participate in
the social ritual practices (religious prac-
tices) that provide identity and a sense
of belonging in this liquid world. Liquid
modernity, in Durkheimian terms, is the
dark desert of anomie (normlessness or
the infinity of desires) where dispersion
is the new normal and everything is seem-
ingly up for sale.
Youth today have the opportunity to
be more conscious about “staying put”
and upholding and honoring their re-
ligious and familial traditions more so
than previous generations because we
are more aware today of the negative
fallout of mobility, moving away, sepa-
ration, and physical dispersion. So, the
message might simply be: Youth, be bold,
don’t move. Make your local community,
your local parish a better place. In par-
ticular, eat meals together, especially the
Eucharist. As Jesus himself taught, we re-
iterate our stories at “table” and in doing
so fulfill the human desire for solidarity.
A meal eaten alone is not a “meal.” As
many adult baby boomers have learned
from experience (although many still ad-
here to the American myth of individual-
ism), it is not necessarily greener on the
other side. As a baby boomer, the ques-
tion I would like to ask today’s youth:
What is so bad about staying put? Why
do you have to move to prove who you
are or find your identity? Consider that
it may be more honorable to stay in the
family and community you were raised
in. And if staying put means continuing
your father or mother’s occupation or
business all the more should accolades
be showered on you for maintaining the
tradition. To carry on the Catholic faith,
the family name, business, or parish, is
honorable and should be applauded, for
it is not only within one’s community
that one finds identity, purpose, honor,
and self-worth but also in continuing that
tradition for the next generation. Physi-
cally moving often disrupts this whole
process. Can youth today, therefore, see
and understand this ingrained and often
insidious cultural process of mobility for
what it often is and then resist it?