Part II: How did we get here?
The Trust Apocalypse: How We Lost Faith in Our Institutions and Each Other
This is part II of a four-part series exploring the nature of the trust apocalypse and what we can do about it:
The decline of trust is not a sudden occurrence but the result of a multi-decade process marked by profound societal shifts. This process can be conceptualized as a three-act play, with each act compounding the vulnerabilities of the previous one.
Act I: The Erosion of Social Cohesion
The first act tells the story of modern disconnection, which began in the late 1960s. In his seminal work Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community1 (revisited in his most recent book, Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again2), Robert Putnam documented the steady decline of local social networks and civic participation that had once been the backbone of American community life. The post-war era had been defined by a rich fabric of associations and shared experiences, exemplified by the close-knit communities of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, where neighborhoods thrived on face-to-face interactions, active community organizations, and civic-minded associations. These networks fostered a robust sense of belonging and mutual support.
However, starting in the mid-1960s, several transformative forces began to weaken these bonds:
Generational Shifts: The generational transition from the World War II generation to the Baby Boomers brought different social priorities. While the older generation was unified by shared experiences (such as the collective sacrifice during the war), the younger generation grew up in a more individualized, less community-centered environment—a trend that’s continued for Gen Xers and Millennials.
Technological Shifts: The rise of television, the advent of automobiles, the emergence of suburban malls, and even the widespread adoption of home air conditioning all conspired to draw people away from neighborhood interactions and toward an increasingly atomized existence.
Changing Lifestyles: The post-war boom and subsequent suburbanization led families away from densely populated urban centers. As people moved into isolated suburbs and embraced the convenience of cars and shopping malls, the once-frequent face-to-face encounters in tight-knit communities dwindled.
These factors combined to reduce the overall fabric of community life. The social capital that once held communities together began to dissipate, as fewer people engaged in local organizations, volunteered, or even participated in casual, neighborly interactions. Jonathan Haidt (a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business) blames the loss of a play-based childhood, which underpins his book Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, on this loss of trust within our communities:
“That loss of local community and trust in act I is one of the major reasons why Americans began to lock up their kids in the 1990s, which is Act II. Since we now had less knowledge of or trust in the other adults in our neighborhoods, we became much less likely to let children out for unsupervised free play or just plain “hanging out” until a much later age.”3
The implications are clear: when individuals lose their local bonds, the trust that underpins societal cohesion weakens, leaving communities vulnerable to isolation and disengagement. At the most fundamental level, the lived relationships between human beings in shared physical spaces are the bedrock of trustworthiness. If individuals cannot trust their neighbors, this reflects and contributes to broader societal breakdowns in trust.
Act II: The Obsolescence of Post-War Institutions
The second act is that the institutions underpinning post-war prosperity were designed for a world that no longer exists. In the decades following World War II, institutions—from government bodies to media organizations—benefited from an era marked by collective sacrifice and shared purpose. But by the early 1970s, these institutions began to show signs of decay. Landmark events like the Watergate scandal and the contentious conclusion of the Vietnam War shattered public confidence. These events exposed deep-seated issues within the system, undermining the credibility of institutions once revered for their integrity.
Stephen Macedo’s book, In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us4, presents a scathing account of the institutional failures around COVID policies and information (lockdowns were an outdated and disputed policy; the possibility of a lab leak was known but not revealed and actively suppressed; vaccine efficacy was falsified and pushed through multiple channels) providing ample evidence that a variety of institutions were less deserving of the level of trust that had been granted them.
More recently, the attempted assassination of then-former president Donald Trump in Pennsylvania highlighted the degree of under-competence (the delta between perception and performance) of the US Secret Service and local law enforcement, laying bare problems of leadership, training, resource allocation, and inter-agency culture that had built up over time. It wasn’t just a one-day fluke—it was the result of systemic issues that allowed small mistakes to compound into a significant security failure.
Such institutional failure can be attributed to three interrelated dynamics:
Capture: Institutions that accumulate significant social, economic, or cultural value become targets for capture by self-interested actors. Over time, this capture shifts institutional priorities away from serving the public good, compromising their integrity and effectiveness.
Corruption and Sclerosis: All human-designed systems are susceptible to entropy. Over time, institutions grow inefficient, rigid, and self-serving. Instead of adapting to external pressures or fulfilling their missions, they focus on preserving their existence, further undermining their legitimacy.
Obsolescence: Technological and societal changes have accelerated to the point where institutions cannot keep pace. This growing misalignment between institutional function and societal needs creates widespread disillusionment and systemic failure.
The result is a profound crisis of legitimacy. Trust rapidly erodes when institutions fail to meet the public's expectations—or worse, when they appear to work against the common interest. As institutions become less trustworthy, trust erodes further in a vicious cycle. This leaves society without reliable mechanisms for addressing shared challenges, creating fertile ground for further instability.
Act III: The Changing Informational Landscape
The third act is driven by revolutionary changes in how information is consumed and shared. Arguably, it started in the 1980s with the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine5, followed by the rise of radio “talking heads” and the transformation of news into a profit-driven enterprise. These changes have all contributed to an informational landscape that thrives on division and sensationalism.
Matt Taibbi, in his book Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another, describes how starting in the 1990s, media began to pry families apart systematically, set group against group, and more and more make news consumption a bubble-like, “safe space” stimulation of the vitriolic reflex:
“We started to turn the ongoing narrative of the news into something like a religious contract, in which the idea was not just to make you mad, but to keep you mad, whipped up in a state of devotional anger. Even in what conservatives would call the “liberal” media, we used blunt signals to create audience solidarity. We started to employ anti-intellectualism on a scale I’d never seen before, and it ran through much of the available content.”6
The advent of 24-hour news cycles, social media platforms, hyper-targeted digital advertising, and the attention and surveillance economy has further fragmented public discourse. Influential analyses—such as DiResta’s on the triad of influencers, algorithms, and crowd dynamics7—warn that this attention economy is inherently prone to amplifying extreme views and deepening social divides.
While institutions have been decaying, technology has advanced at an unprecedented rate. Many institutional forms necessary for the future will be built upon the technologies that have emerged over the past two decades, such as the Internet and artificial intelligence. However, these technologies were not designed with the explicit intent of bearing the social and civic load required to replace failing institutions. Instead, they were often created for efficiency, profitability, and engagement rather than for fostering trust, stability, and societal cohesion. Yuval Noah Harari highlights in his book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, the importance of our informational systems to the proper functioning of democracy:
“To function, a democracy needs to meet two conditions: it needs to enable a free public conversation on key issues, and it needs to maintain a minimum of social order and institutional trust. Free conversation must not slip into anarchy. Especially when dealing with urgent and important problems, the public debate should be conducted according to accepted rules, and there should be a legitimate mechanism to reach some kind of final decision, even if not everybody likes it.”8
One of the clearest examples of misalignment within our modern informational sphere is the issue of algorithmic control, as highlighted in the documentary The Social Dilemma. The artificial intelligence systems that structure online attention have not been designed to prioritize individuals' well-being, development, or informed decision-making. Instead, because they are embedded in the revenue models of large for-profit companies, they are optimized to maximize ad revenue, often by promoting sensationalism, division, and engagement at any cost. This divergence between what is best for society and what is best for a platform's business model illustrates a fundamental flaw in the technological landscape as it stands today.
Furthermore, narrow and socially corrosive interests have already preemptively captured many of these technologies. Large-scale digital platforms, financial systems, and communication infrastructures are now controlled by entities prioritizing shareholder profit and political influence over public trust and resilience. This dynamic has created an environment where technology, rather than serving as a force for renewal, often exacerbates the problems it is meant to solve.
As technologies like generative AI blur the lines between truth and fiction, we must confront the possibility that the rapid evolution of our informational systems could further undermine our collective ability to distinguish fact from fabrication.
A Holistic View of the Crisis
These three acts are deeply interconnected:
The erosion of community bonds (Act I) isolates individuals and makes them more susceptible to the allure of divisive online content.
The decay of institutional integrity (Act II) provides fertile ground for populist narratives that exploit these social divisions.
The transformation of the informational environment (Act III) amplifies these trends by saturating public discourse with misinformation and sensationalism.
To fully understand the crisis of trust, we must integrate these three dimensions: communal, institutional, and informational. Institutions have failed, but the technologies that could replace them are misaligned with societal needs, and the human relationships that underpin trust have been severely weakened. If people don’t trust each other, they’ll never trust institutions—not feeling alone and under threat is the basis on which all other trust has to be built. Yet, how can we trust each other when our informational systems are tearing us apart?
Addressing one of these domains in isolation will not be enough. Any meaningful solution must consider the interdependent nature of these failures and seek to realign institutional functions, technological design, and community structures toward a foundation of long-term trustworthiness and resilience.
Up Next—Part III: What can we do about it?
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Touchstone Books, 2001).
Robert D. Putnam, Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
The Great Deterioration of Local Community Was A Major Driver of The Loss of The Play-Based Childhood, https://www.afterbabel.com/p/community-based-childhood (accessed March 21, 2025).
Stephen Macedo, In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeton University Press, 2025).
Wikipedia contributors, "Fairness doctrine," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fairness_doctrine&oldid=1271208751 (accessed February 5, 2025).
Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another (OR Books, 2021).
Renée DiResta, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality (PublicAffairs, 2024).
Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (Random House, 2024).