In This Article
Friendship recession is the journalistic shorthand for the measured decline in close friendships among American adults across the last three decades, documented in survey data from the Survey Center on American Life and elsewhere.
The Survey Center's 2021 American Perspectives Survey is the most-cited dataset: the share of men reporting no close friends rose from 3 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2021. The share of women with no close friends rose less, from 2 percent to 10 percent. Average number of close friends fell across nearly every demographic. The pattern is clearest among men under 30 and among adults with less than a college degree, but it shows up at every age.
What is driving it
The proximate causes are well-documented: declining workplace stability has reduced the long-running colleague friendships that anchored midlife social networks; declining religious participation has reduced the third-place community that produced casual friendships; longer working hours have reduced the discretionary time required to maintain friendships; smartphone-mediated communication has substituted thin contact for time-intensive in-person contact. Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone documented the earlier phase of the same trend; the friendship recession is the current chapter.
Why it matters
Friendship density is one of the strongest predictors of subjective wellbeing, and friendship loss tracks closely with the rising rates of self-reported loneliness, depression, and despair. The Surgeon General's 2023 advisory on loneliness explicitly named declining friendship as a public-health concern. The downstream effects, on mental health, on physical health, on life expectancy, are well-enough established that the trend is taken seriously even by sceptics.
What might reverse it
The interventions with the most evidence are old-fashioned: regular in-person time with the same people across years, third places that produce casual contact (gyms, hobby groups, parent groups), and the deliberate practice of being the friend who initiates plans. Jeffrey Hall's research finds that turning an acquaintance into a casual friend requires about 50 hours of contact, a casual friend into a real friend about 90 hours, and a real friend into a close friend about 200 hours. The numbers are intimidating; the implication is that close friendships are made of accumulated time, and time is what the friendship recession is measuring as scarce.
Where it shows up around VibeLovely
Friendship recession is one of the most-cited concepts across the Friendship desk and the underlying lens for Adult Friendship coverage on how to make and keep friends now.
References
- Survey Center on American Life. (2021). The state of American friendship: change, challenges, and loss. americansurveycenter.org
- Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278-1296.
- Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster.
- U.S. Surgeon General. (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. Department of Health and Human Services. hhs.gov/surgeon-general
- Cox, D. A. (2023). Why Americans are lonelier and its effects. American Enterprise Institute Survey Center.
