Anxieties of Outage Part III: Social

Photo credit: cottonbro studio

This article is the third and final installment of my “Anxieties of Outage” series—the first focused on the most obvious anxiety explored in the book, Technology; the second focused on an equally prevalent anxiety of modern life, Politics. This third post delves into the social anxieties that many of us feel and that provide a backdrop of distrust in the novel.

In many ways, our social anxieties can be the most difficult to self-diagnose and understand because they are hidden in our consciousness. We all are accustomed to complaining about technology and politics. Yet, the growing distrust many of us feel around social relationships impacts how we interact with other people every day.

A Pew survey shows the percentage of Americans who agree with the statement that “most people can be trusted” declined from 46% in 1972 to 34% in 2024. That number is even lower among people with a high school education or less (24%), household income below $50K (25%), and young adults ages 18-29 (26%).

Much of the reason for this distrust is because we tend to assume others act in self-interest rather than good intentions. Another Pew survey found that 62% of Americans “believe others mostly look out for themselves” and 58% “believe others would take advantage of them.” While an amazing 79% of Americans state they have little confidence in each other.

Just as our trust of others has diminished, so has our trust in institutions. A Gallup poll showed confidence in U.S. institutions, including government, banks, organized religion, public schools, newspapers, and the medical system, to be near an all-time low, down from 48% in 1979 to just 27% in 2026.

These social anxieties—in particular distrust in interpersonal relationships and institutions—are at the heart of the Outage storyline. Throughout the novel, Rachel Farrell, the protagonist, is unsure whom to trust—if anyone. She doesn’t trust the wife of her husband’s business partner who shows up unexpectedly at her house. She doesn’t trust the FBI agent who wants to question her husband. She doesn’t even trust her own husband, Caleb, who she discovers knew the outage was about to happen.

Paradoxically, this distrust we have of others is in direct conflict with our psychological needs. An American Psychological Association survey found 92% of adults recognize relationships as a key source of meaning in their lives, most of all family relationships (77%). Yet, we feel more socially alone than ever, with 54% of us feeling “isolated from others” and 50% who “lack companionship.” A U.S. Surgeon General report characterized this phenomenon as an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” and found the percentage of Americans reporting “no close friends” skyrocketed from just 3% in 1990 to 17% in 2024.

So what is causing such deep social distrust despite our need for social connection? One might assume that the COVID pandemic, with the risk that those closest to us could infect us and the increased isolation of social distancing, degraded our interpersonal trust. But the research suggests distrust has been growing over time. The greater culprit for our social anxiety may be technology. Research performed at the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University and other institutions has found social connections improve with the elimination of smartphones. Anecdotally, we all can see for ourselves every day how phones displace the time we would otherwise spend interacting with others, exacerbate unfavorable comparisons to others and concern about social judgment, and drive social withdrawal to avoid uncomfortable real-world encounters.

Despite our pervasive skepticism about technology, we demonstrate in our behavior that, in many ways, we already trust technology more than other people. Consider your own preferences. Do you trust directions you receive in Google Maps or from a gas station attendant? Do you trust you’re getting the best price for an item when you find it on Amazon or from a local salesperson? When you are about to meet someone new in real life, do you look them up on social media first? Every day, we turn to our phones for the definitive answer to “what is true,” even as we are cognitively aware that information can increasingly be used to mislead, manipulate, or deceive us.

The question I created for the characters in Outage is whom to trust when you don’t have your phone as reassurance. Humans are wired with a deep “gut instinct” about whether to trust someone else or not, an instinct that has been diminished by our over-reliance on phones. In the story, I wrote in several characters who help Rachel and her family along the way, everyone from a shotgun-toting waitress who fends off car thieves to a former Marine named Chay who becomes their guardian angel in the final climactic sequence. Throughout the story, Rachel is forced to decide in the moment if she trusts these strangers or not. And, ultimately, in the absence of technology, she must trust her gut about those people closest to her, highlighted in the opening prologue when Rachel, with their adversaries in her crosshairs, must decide if she trusts Caleb.

Unfortunately, the fraying of social trust seems likely to get worse before it gets better. Every day we witness elites in both politics and business acting in their own self-interest, sewing deeper distrust of our leadership. AI, in particular AI-based scams, seems likely to accelerate our social distrust even further. The word “con” is an apocope derived from “confidence.” Such confidence scams exploit our trust in other human beings. As an author, I get dozens of emails every day from scams claiming to be agents, publishers, journalists, and readers. With each malicious solicitation, I feel my willingness to trust other people diminish. And that feels like just the tip of the iceberg in a growing epidemic of fraud already underway, featuring everything from deep fakes of AI-generated voices of relatives asking for money to AI-impersonated executives convincing their finance teams to wire money.

In an AI-powered age in which seeing is no longer believing, the most intimate personal relationships can be exploited, and institutional authority can be so easily impersonated, will our gut instincts wired into our reptilian brains be able to keep up?