Why is social capital starting to decline?

Dave, Anna, and Kayleigh…..

We all think that social capital is all of a sudden declining is because of the people in the United States now these days. I think people are starting to be more dishonest with each other than they used to. Another reason is because, with all the technology we have now these days (cell phones, facebook, etc.) is what’s really starting to make social capital decline. But for some places, especially in the southeast, they are usually more diverse. Dave lives in a small town between Spartanburg and Greenville, South Carolina. It’s called Cowpens, South Carolina. The social capital there is in small community, so everybody knows everybody. However, the majority of the town is rednecks, so they judge people for what they are (race, what they wear, religion, gay/bisexual). I would not want to live there because its not who I am, and I would regret living there for the rest of my life. Kayleigh lives in Pfafftown, North Carolina. She says that the social capital there is not great. “Pfafftown is a really small area. But there are good amounts of people that live here. I live in a little development but not many people truly know each other. I know the names of a few people but that is about it. And my mom is a good friend with just a few different families in this area. I think the social capital is better between the kids. Because my little brother and sister are always out playing with the neighbor kids somewhere.”

How much is our right to vote worth?

We asked ten fellow citizens just that question. The most popular answer was "Not for Sale" with a grand total of four people. Then we got some more creative answers such as "not over my dead body" and "not in my wildest dreams". We decided that the winner for most thoughtful answer was "my right to vote has no price". Only three people decided their right to vote could be worth any amount of money. One was so large that we could not decipher what the amount actually was and the other two were 750 billion and 80 trillion. With these reasults we came to the conclusion that many people do actually value their right to vote. We believe this is important and a good sign that maybe American pride is still worth something these days!

Life without a Cell Phone
Kayleigh said…
Living without a cell phone for 24 hours was not quite as hard as I had expected. Being a few weeks shy of getting my license, the only hard part was communicating with parents about pick up times after school. The only other time I really use my cell phone is in the morning for an alarm. But I just had to do it the old fashioned way, an alarm clock! During the day, I am with my friends, so I very rarely use it then. And at night, there is Facebook! I guess I would say no one really talks on their cell phones at night any more when you can just get online. But we agree that Anna and Dave would use their cell phones more than me because I see my parents at night, where as they have to call theirs. One more small thing I noticed, I use my phone a lot to check the time and I found it very annoying depending on others to tell me what time it was. Now I see why watches used to be a necessity!
- Dave, Kayleigh, and Anna