Cars: Is America’s romance coming to an end?

“Has America passed peak driving?” said Elisabeth Rosenthal in The New York Times. The United States was once famous for its car culture—the home of Motor City, drive-thru movies, and hot rods, where young folk dreamed of getting their kicks on Route 66. “But America’s love affair with its vehicles seems to be cooling.” The number of miles driven overall in the U.S. has dropped 9 percent since it peaked in 2005, and among 16- to 34-year-olds, it’s dropped 23 percent. “The big question, of course, is why,” said William O’Connor in TheDailyBeast.com. The simple answer is that to the Millennial generation, cars no longer have a magic aura of freedom and power. College-educated kids are now obsessed with smartphones and other tech devices rather than Mustangs and Camaros; in the urban enclaves of Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Austin to which young people are flocking, a car is both unnecessary and too expensive.

This is “not a new argument,” said Alex Taylor III in Fortune.com. Ever since the gasoline crisis of 1973, cynics have predicted that America would turn its back on the automobile. But the numbers tell a different story. Monthly car sales reached a five-year high in June, for both large automakers and green car manufacturers such as Tesla. While Millennials have been slow to take up driving, economists say they are beginning to enter the market now that the economy is improving. Drivers aged 55 and over, meanwhile, are buying new cars by the millions. Despite a brief, recessionary slowdown, “America’s car culture is alive and well.”

But the downturn in driving isn’t just a temporary economic trend, said Brian Merchant in Vice.com. It’s a social revolution. American car culture was rooted in the hunger of young people to get away from their families, and from their towns or neighborhoods. Getting the keys to a car meant you could go wherever you liked, and meet whomever you wanted. But now you can do all that on the Internet—instantly and for free. On Facebook and other social media, young people can hang out with their friends, gossip, play games, watch movies, and share music and photos. Because of overdevelopment, Millennials associate driving not with freedom, but with “brain-numbing commutes across smoggy, congested highways.” America’s car culture really is dying: A new generation has found a faster and more convenient way “to move their brains around.”

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