Communities fell apart starting in the 60-80s, well before the internet and social media.
People forget the concrete institutions that were dissolved that led to communities collapsing.
First it was families falling apart due to high rates of divorce and low birth rates. Also people moving away from home for job opportunities split the family apart. Entire towns were hollowed out.
Also the dissolution of institutions like church, political groups, fraternal orders (e.g. Elks, Kiwanis), Charity Groups. See the book "Bowling Alone".
Social media and entertainment spiked afterward to fill the void – but it was the collapse of the families, community groups & towns that were a precursor to the death of communities.
I have some first hand experience with fraternal orders. They sowed the seed of their own destruction somewhere around Vietnam.
They experienced a huge boost in popularity following WW2, where soldiers returning home looked to fill the companionship void left by leaving military service. They experienced similar boosts following Korea and Vietnam, but they got spoiled by these: they got so veteran-centric (in no small part because of the negative view Americans at large had of the Vietnam war) that they basically stopped recruiting anyone else.
Then military culture shifted, leading a lot of people to not identify with their service as much as prior generations. The fraternal orders didn't try to recruit, and by now it's too late: very few young people cherish the thought of hanging out with a bunch of septagenarians.
They started to decline before then, if I recall correctly.
Most required dues; the Great Depression saw the roles sink dramatically as dues could not be paid.
Health insurance, home insurance, and other social safety nets were often paid for or covered in-kind through fraternal orders.
Fraternal orders (not sure of the general, non-gendered term) are an alternative community organization to religions that would do well to return.
EDIT: looks like we are both sort of right. The Freemasons continued to grow after WWII but the general ecosystem of fraternal orders started their decline after the New Deal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_fraternalism
People forget the concrete institutions that were dissolved that led to communities collapsing.
First it was families falling apart due to high rates of divorce and low birth rates. Also people moving away from home for job opportunities split the family apart. Entire towns were hollowed out.
Also the dissolution of institutions like church, political groups, fraternal orders (e.g. Elks, Kiwanis), Charity Groups. See the book "Bowling Alone".
Social media and entertainment spiked afterward to fill the void – but it was the collapse of the families, community groups & towns that were a precursor to the death of communities.