In an address on youth well-being, political scientist Robert Putnam, whose prescient 2000 book Bowling Alone predicted a quarter-century-long decline in American community, laid out a sweeping historical diagnosis worthy of his unofficial title: “the modern prophet of American loneliness.” Speaking at a recent Dartmouth-United Nations Development Programme symposium, the Harvard Kennedy School professor linked decades of social disintegration directly to the rise of populist authoritarian figures like Donald Trump—as well as to Gen Z’s struggles with anxiety and poor mental health.