The Connection Gap: Why Americans Feel so Alone

Shopping online. Chatting on the cell phone. Computer games. Instant travel to wherever you want to go. Yet all these conveniences and entertainment come at a high price. By surrounding ourselves with gadgets and material comfort, we are cutting ourselves off from what matters most. Our fellow human beings.

The Connection Gap explores the new loneliness of people who are over-committing and under-connecting. Laura Pappano takes a passionate look at the pressures and desires of modern culture by drawing on personal experience, academic studies, and perceptive observations of our culture as reflected in advertising, literature, and popular magazines.

Pappano turns an unflinching eye at the benefits-and drawbacks-of life in our frenzied, technological society. When we choose to order groceries online, what happens? We miss out on the smells and sights of the food that is an integral part of life, and we no longer experience the easy-going chatting with fellow shoppers and grocery-store workers. Our children, now participating in their "leisure-time activities" through regimented classes after school, no longer play with each other in their own neighborhoods. We hire pet sitters rather than asking neighbors to help out. Chances are we barely know our own neighbors, anyway.

Yet with all these armchair conveniences, we are no happier nor more relaxed than we were decades ago. We need to engage and reconnect, Pappano states, by infusing our lives with some of the activities we have worked so hard to banish. She concludes with concrete suggestions for filling our lives once more with what's really important-spending time with each other, and less time with the gadgets around us.

Laura Pappano is an award-winning journalist and active community leader. She is the author of Inside School Turnarounds (2010), co-author of Playing With the Boys (2008), and author of The Connection Gap (2001). Laura is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Education Life section and other publications, including The Hechinger Report and The Women’s Review of Books.

A former education columnist for The Boston Globe and regular writer for The Harvard Education Letter now defunct), her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe Magazine, among other print and online publications. Her New York Times piece, “How Big Time Sports Ate College Life,” is included in The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition (8th edition, 2013).

Laura has also been a moderator/speaker at education forums, including at SXSW.edu, MSNBC’s “Education Nation” town hall, and the 92nd Street Y, among others. She has been a radio guest, including on The Diane Rehm Show.

In 2011, she founded The New Haven Student Journalism Project, which helps urban public school students learn about the craft and power of journalism. The program is supported by Yale University’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs and brings Yale undergrad mentors to work with students in grades 2-8 to produce a real newspaper, currently The East Rock Record, which is distributed throughout the city.

Laura is writer-in-residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College. For seven years, she edited the FairGameNews blog, now preserved as an archive. She is a trustee of Long Wharf Theatre and serves on the board of New Haven Reads, which provides tailored tutoring to children who struggle with reading. A 1984 Yale grad, Laura was goalkeeper for the 1980 Ivy League Championship Field Hockey team. Now, she bikes, runs, and plays USTA tennis. Laura lives with her family in New Haven, CT.