How 9/11 changed us

Wednesday marks 23 years since America’s first personal experience with terrorism (wrong as it feels not to “count” massacres of indigenous and enslaved peoples, those terrors we made legal). 

In less than an hour we lost that treasured, naive innocence that nearly every other culture left behind centuries ago.

It brought us together, ever so briefly.

Did it change us? Perhaps more on a personal level than as a community, despite initial feelings. If today’s biting divisiveness is any indication, the bond of shared pain faded all too quickly. Fear can do that.

Pew Research Center and Gallup each conducted a series of polls to gauge Sept. 11’s impact on Americans in the ensuing months, then one decade, and two decades later (Gallup in 2021, Pew in 2022). What they found suggests enduring insecurities more personal than national.

The earth shook.

At first, we felt reality shift underneath us. By the following August, half of U.S. adults surveyed by Pew Research said the country “had changed in a major way” as a result of the attacks — a feeling that not only didn’t fade, but actually increased to 61% 10 years later. 

By 2016, another Pew survey found 76% of adults named Sept. 11 one of the 10 most impactful historical events of their lifetimes. Those results transcended age, gender and political affiliations.

It felt very personal.

Strikingly, even more people Pew surveyed volunteered it as the most important thing that happened to them personally in the prior year. They ranked it higher than other big life events, such as births or deaths.

Gallup also compared a trio of polls, each asking the same questions about terrorism and fears, shortly after Sept. 11, followed by 10 and 20 years later. 

In 2021, the highest percentage — 64% — said they’ve permanently changed the way they live as a result of the attacks. That’s up from 58% in 2011 and half after 9/11, suggesting at least some feelings of insecurity have increased rather than decreased over time as one might expect.

We’re still afraid.

Fear was widespread, not just in the days immediately after the attacks, but throughout the fall of 2001. 

Most Americans said they were very (28%) or somewhat (45%) worried about another attack. When Pew Research asked Americans a year later to describe how their lives changed, about half of adults surveyed said they felt more afraid, more careful, more distrustful or more vulnerable in general. 

Despite a lack of similar attacks here, terrorism has remained at or near the top of Pew Research Center’s annual policy priorities survey ever since (for 2024, it was second only to the economy), although only a quarter of Americans in 2022 still said terrorism was a “very big” problem, suggesting that may be shifting.

In the 2001 Gallup poll, 43% of Americans said they were less willing to fly on airplanes, 30% were less willing to attend crowded events, and 48% were less willing to travel overseas. 

In the 2021 Gallup poll, the travel-averse group dropped to about 26%, but even more than before were hesitant to attend big events (37%). Before you say, “that’s COVID,” consider the crowd-avoidance result was nearly the same in their 2017 poll.

Gallup also found declining confidence in the government’s ability to protect against terrorism. 

In 2021, a bare majority of Americans (59%) felt such confidence, lower than in 2011 (75%) or shortly after the attacks (88%). In fact, Gallup had only measured lower confidence (55%) just after a 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif.

It blurred the line between liberty and security.

Before the close of 2001, Congress quickly passed the voluminous Patriot Act, which along with a new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court created new federal authority to monitor domestic activities. 

While these enjoyed broad support, most people wanted the government to “do something” but drew the line against allowing the government to monitor their own emails and phone calls (77% opposed, Pew Research). 

In September 2001 and January 2002, 55% majorities said giving up some civil liberties was necessary to protect against terrorism. That’s nearly double what it was five years before the attacks, when 29% agreed it was necessary. 

Between Pew’s 2001 and 2022 surveys, Americans who said their bigger concern was that the government hadn’t gone far enough to protect the country outnumbered those saying it went too far in restricting civil liberties.

It changed our relationship with technology.

Analyses by the Brookings Institution, which tracks technological developments and societal changes, suggest Sept. 11 influenced both.

Today’s instant worldwide news wasn’t possible in 2001. Smartphones and video calls, news transmission and (both legitimate and questionable) source proliferation, telecom networks, AI, privacy, digital inequities, security and cyberthreats — so much has changed in 23 years it’s impossible to keep up, let alone imagine how that day might have gone with today’s technologies.

According to the Brookings analysis, new technologies have made disaster preparedness and infrastructure more robust. On the other hand, in 2001 the likelihood of misinformation and disinformation was very low, revealing the downside of instant news and social media. More capable, yet more vulnerable.

Conveniences and security potentials aside, advanced technologies also generate concerns over privacy, civil liberties and unwarranted oversight (concerns which led to some curtailments via the U.S. Freedom Act of 2015). 

Undoubtedly as innovations and policies evolve, the ever-conflicting needs of liberty and security will keep their dividing line precariously balanced at best.

Perhaps that’s as it should be.

See the research at:

www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/09/02/two-decades-later-the-enduring-legacy-of-9-11/ 

https://news.gallup.com/poll/354236/say-american-lives-permanently-changed.aspx

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Sholeh Patrick, J.D. is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network who was working for Idaho Congressman C.L. “Butch” Otter on Sept. 11, 2001. Email: sholeh@cdapress.com