How did the Masons become so irrelevant so quickly?

[Diabolical Materialism]

I think television, suburbanization, and mass communication all have a role to play in this. In person social activities and attendance at social clubs of all kinds seem to have drop massively all around the same time. The Masons aren't unique in this read, it seems the Kiwanis club, the Elks, Rotary etc. are all having the same problem. Declining and rapidly aging membership with very few young members joining.

Life in the age of television, and later the internet is far lonelier. It would be considered highly abnormal to go a whole day without speaking to someone in generations past. I know several young people who do that almost every day.

[Diabolical Materialism]

Groups like the Freemasons and Elks did not function like a proto-welfare state but others like the Knights of Columbus and Tammany Hall certainly did.

They are fundamentally different kinds of groups of course, but they're both facing a similar fate these days.