REALITYWIPE

RESEARCHERS

The Friendship Recession: What the Data Actually Show About Shrinking Social Circles

3 the researchers behind it — If your inner script says 'everyone else has a full social circle and I'm the only one whose friendships thinned out', the data disagree. In 2021, 12%

Survey Center on American Life, American Enterprise Institute

Daniel A. Cox

Known for:Survey research documenting the American 'friendship recession' and the steep decline in men's close friendships

Key findings

  1. 2021

    In the May 2021 American Perspectives Survey, 12% of Americans reported having no close friends — versus 3% in 1990 — and Americans reported having fewer close friends, talking to them less often, and relying on them less for personal support than in decades past. ↗

  2. 2021

    Men's friendships declined most sharply: the share of men with six or more close friends fell from 55% in 1990 to 27% in 2021, men with zero close friends rose fivefold from 3% to 15%, and men were far less likely than women to report recently receiving emotional support from a friend. ↗

University of Kansas

Jeffrey A. Hall

Known for:Quantifying how many hours of shared time it takes to form friendships of different depths

Key findings

  1. 2018

    Tracking adults who had recently moved and first-year students, friendship developed along a dosage curve: roughly 50 shared hours to move from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 to friend, and more than 200 to close friend. ↗

  2. 2018

    Hours alone weren't enough: closeness grew with time spent hanging out, joking around and in meaningful conversation, while hours merely spent together at work or in class did little to turn colleagues into friends. ↗

Duke University and University of Arizona

Miller McPherson

Known for:The 2006 'Social Isolation in America' study reporting shrinking core discussion networks — and the methodological debate it launched

Key findings

  1. 2006

    With Smith-Lovin and Brashears, he compared the 1985 and 2004 General Social Surveys and reported the mean number of confidants Americans discuss important matters with fell from 2.94 to 2.08 — with the modal respondent going from three confidants in 1985 to zero in 2004. ↗

  2. 2009

    When Claude Fischer argued the isolation finding was likely a survey artifact, McPherson and colleagues published a formal reply defending the analysis while acknowledging the data's limits — an exchange that made the difficulty of measuring social isolation part of the published record. ↗

View full research file ↗All researchers