I know of some people who only talk to the houses directly around them. The "neighborhood" to them is the 1 house distance square around um. Sometimes even then its hard to get the 9 households together for a cookout or the impossible lets talk about preparing for the worst meetings.
Yes, that's true. Though when the various grids and most information sources go down for a while, all those things that keep us so connected and so apart, the permafrost will tend to thaw out a bit, you know?