The Civility Shortage

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

As the economy bounces back from COVID, supply is having a difficult time keeping up with surging demand. Shortages are rampant in every sector. A microprocessor chip shortage has resulted in a shortage of new cars, which has led to a shortage of used cars, which has led to a shortage of rental cars. A shortage of lumber is creating a shortage of new home building, which is driving up housing costs and apartment rents. A shortage of labor is preventing restaurants, hotels, airlines, and other services businesses from operating at full capacity. Following the laws of supply and demand, all these shortages are driving up prices, as quality suffers and consumer frustration mounts—just as we enter the peak summer travel season.

These dynamics are making another shortage apparent: a shortage of civility. I recently took a family trip and witnessed more altercations over a long weekend than I recall witnessing in an entire year pre-COVID. There were the two drivers shouting expletives at each other in adjacent lanes at an intersection, the people boarding a car rental bus telling each other to “shut the f*ck up,” and the passengers nearly coming to blows over who would board the aircraft one person ahead of the other. These incidents all occurred on the way to the event we were attending—a youth soccer tournament, which featured a man in a cowboy hat telling another parent she should, again, “shut the f*uck up,” a dad calling a player on the opposing team a “f*cking punk” as he threw the ball in, and a group getting into an altercation at the hostess stand of a restaurant.

Unfortunately, these personal anecdotes are more than perceptions. In a survey about the state of civility conducted by Weber Shandwick, Powell Tate, and KRC Research every year since 2010, it is clear that America has a civility problem. In their latest poll of over 1,000 U.S. adults, 93 percent of Americans believe we have a civility problem. 74 percent believe civility is worse compared to a few years ago, and 75 percent believe incivility has reached “crisis levels.” Worse, 88 percent believe incivility is leading to violent behavior.

Not surprisingly, the top factors cited by Americans as eroding civility were: #1) Social media/the Internet and #2) and The White House—two of my favorite recurring themes on this blog. A full 70% think the Internet encourages uncivil behavior and 63 percent feel the impact of social media on civility been more negative than positive. Meanwhile, 79 percent thought the 2016 presidential election was uncivil and an equal percentage say that uncivil comments by political leaders encourage greater incivility in society.

This prevalence of incivility in our online experiences and political discourse has metastasized into our everyday lives. The frequency with which we experience incivility in our lives increased substantially over the four years of the Trump Administration—increasing from an average of 6.7 uncivil interactions per week in 2016 to 10.2 four years later.

And then COVID happened.

All these surveys were conducted before 2020. It's safe to assume that incivility has only gotten worse after eighteen months of a global pandemic that necessitated remote work and online social interactions. Making matters worse, we have politicized face masks, testing, and vaccines and proliferated conspiracy theories on the origins and dangers of coronavirus. We are re-entering civil society with stunted social etiquette, balkanized political views, and a steady dose of self-validating news feeds that categorize “others” into out-groups worthy only of disdain.

So what can we do to solve this civility shortage? Like any societal change, it starts with personal accountability. Incivility can't be someone else’s problem to solve. Stop assuming the worst intentions in others. Be self-aware enough to know when you are acting in an uncivil manner. Talk to your children about the importance of civility. Lead by example.

Our institutions also need to step up to solve the civility crisis. Social media sites must do more to eliminate hate speech, hostility, and disinformation that fosters incivility—58 percent believe the elimination of fake news from the Internet will improve civility. Our politicians also need to behave in a more civil way—80 percent agree that the level of civility won’t improve until our government leaders treat each other with more civility.

Perhaps the most promising cause for optimism that civility can be improved is the American workplace. The number of people who have personally experienced incivility at work has fallen substantially from 43 percent in 2011 to 23 percent in 2019. The attributes of the modern workplace—including a sense of common purpose, insistence on high integrity leadership, frequent social interaction, embracing of diversity, and intolerance of discriminatory behavior—are ones we should strive to emulate in our society as a whole. Clearly, these principles lay the foundation for a more civil society.

Resource scarcity can bring out bad behavior in all of us. But, hopefully, as our economy continues to build momentum and supply shortages are overcome, we can rebuild our civility as well.