Harris Poll Alienation Index

Description

Joseph Bernstein:

"The longest-running measure of alienation in American life is the Harris Poll’s Alienation Index, which has been calculated annually for more than 50 years.

It’s a simple survey that asks whether respondents agree with these five statements:

• What you think doesn’t count very much anymore.
• The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
• Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself.
• The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you.
• You’re left out of things going on around you.

Harris then averages the rates of agreement to reach an index, which is a rough proxy for how included Americans feel in their country and their communities. In 1998, a year after the “Birth of a Digital Nation,” was published, the score was 56%. In 2008, as the platforms became dominant, it was 58%. Last year, it was 69%, the highest it’s ever been." (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/in-the-2010s-decade-we-became-alienated-by-technology?)