He's 24. He has a Notion board for "self-work," a Shopify trial, a personal brand, and a therapist. He has no boss, no team, no guild, no church, no carpool, no coach, no spouse.

Fifty years ago, the on-ramps into adulthood looked different: apprenticeships, unions, congregations, civic clubs, marriage earlier in life, literal carpools. You joined things. You learned from people who'd done it before. You built a life alongside others who were building theirs.

Today, we work on ourselves. For a decade. Sometimes longer.

If we're working on ourselves this hard, why do the social outcomes look worse?

The Signals

1. The Entrepreneur Fantasy

A 2024 Shopify-Gallup study found that 62% of U.S. adults say they'd prefer to be their own boss, and more than half say they'd take on substantial financial risk to do it. But actual self-employment levels have not skyrocketed. Aspiration has outrun apprenticeship.

2. Delayed Pair-Bonding, Shrinking Households

The median age at first marriage in the U.S. is near 30, up dramatically from mid-century, and single-person households have climbed for six decades. We date like we're shipping a product: more keys, fewer shared kitchens.

3. The Friendship Recession

The U.S. Surgeon General calls loneliness a public health crisis. Roughly half of adults report loneliness, with the highest rates among young adults. Surveys show fewer close friends, and a rising number of Americans report zero close friendships.

4. The Retreat from Shared Institutions

Church attendance is down to roughly 3 in 10 on a typical weekend, from 42% two decades ago, while union membership sits at 9.9% in 2024, a series low. Different institutions, same direction: thinner communal glue.

5. Transit: Everyone in Their Own Car

69.2% of U.S. workers drove alone to work in 2024, with 88% of auto commuters driving solo. Carpooling's share has collapsed from 20% in 1980 to single digits today. This is individualism literally in motion: autonomy on wheels, the death of the rolling commons.

6. Time Alone

American Time Use data show young Americans (15-29) spend 45% more time alone than in 2010, with the share of time spent alone rising from 43.5% in 2003 to nearly 50% by 2022. Solitude has become the new default state.

7. Family Formation

The total fertility rate in 2023 hit a new low of 1.62. Births ticked up slightly in 2024 but remain within a decade-long downtrend. This isn't "bad," but it's consistent with individualized sequencing and delayed interdependence: fewer children, later in life.

Why This Happened

Technologies of the self. Algorithmic feeds personalize status games, and the creator economy holds out identity-as-income. We built tools that make the self infinite and the group optional.

Institutional atrophy. Unions are down, congregations are thinning, and durable third places are disappearing.

Spatial form. Post-war land use and transport policy subsidized solitude through single-family zoning and highways, creating longer distances that demand car dependency and eliminate incidental encounters.

Workplace reconfiguration. Remote work stabilized around 20-28% in 2024 for many white-collar cohorts, which is great for flexibility and focus but weaker for weak-tie formation if ungoverned. Freedom scaled while formation didn't.

The Costs

Health. Loneliness is associated with elevated mortality risk and worse mental and physical outcomes.

Human capital. Fewer apprenticeships and mentorship-dense environments mean a rush to solo entrepreneurship without situated practice, creating a widening desire/experience gap.

Civic capacity. Lower union density, thinner congregational life, and less volunteering than pre-pandemic highs reduce our ability to coordinate.

Family and network resilience. Delayed marriages and smaller households can mean fewer built-in buffers when life goes sideways.

You don't fix social problems with solo solutions.

What to Do

The Team Decade

A counter-narrative for 20-somethings: work for someone serious, learn in public, collect mentors, and join a hard team before you launch. Three years in a guild for every one year you want to go solo-an apprenticeship tax on yourself.

Rebuild Weak Ties by Design

At work: Office days for network density, not "butts in seats," and tie remote work to structured collision rituals like project guilds, demos, and brown-bags.

In cities: Policy levers that reverse pure solo transport through HOV and carpool incentives, employer-sponsored vanpools, bike networks, and "third place" zoning.

Institutions worth joining: Serious rec leagues, choirs, service clubs, makerspaces, and congregations. Treat social connection like sleep, protein, or savings-program it.

Dating Without Perfection Theater

Self-esteem rises across the life course, so you do not have to "finish yourself" to be a good partner. Build together, because you'll both be different at 35 anyway.

Civic On-Ramps for Builders

Co-ops, credit unions, neighborhood associations, and yes, unions in sectors where they actually build training pipelines and raise standards. Modernized guilds for a world that forgot what guilds were for.

The Other Side

Individualism powered civil rights, entrepreneurship, choice, and creativity. Remote work increased access for caregivers and disabled workers, while entrepreneurship remains a vital pressure-release valve in sclerotic industries. The gains are real-the critique is about over-rotation, not the principle itself.

A Culture Isn't Just a Roomful of Optimized Selves

It's the structure that lets average people do extraordinary things together. We've maxed out the "self." The next compounding curve is the "us."