8 ms·

Survey: Average American Hasn’t Made a New Friend in 5 Years

78 points by Vaslo 7y ago

mrtweetyhack 7y ago
Who keeps doing studies on me?
mikelyons 7y ago
I made a new friend this year, but only because we both were on the verge of suicide. (we're better now)
zepto 7y ago
Meaningless without comparison to other places or times where it is different.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
abc_lisper 7y ago
I thought I was a aberration, but I am among average. Whippie! :D
taurath 7y ago
Our society is desperate for more social organizations in real life. Where are things like the rotary club, the elks lodge, the masons? Cultures that live in the real world? Businesses to support those groups? Fan groups seem to do okay, with conventions that make meeting up regularly a part of the culture. Board gamer groups do a decent job of mixing in the low range. Its hard to find places in society where people go to meet other people. Bars are sort of them, but you tend to meet a lot of alcoholics. Hobby/activity groups are frequently too uncentered, culturally.
- babaganoosh89 7y ago
  Rave/music scene is where a lot of people make friends too.
  - thatswrong0 7y ago
    Yep that’s exactly it for me. I’ve made 3 really close friends in the past 4 years and tons of other acquaintances/ friends through my local music scene.
  - ncldmmt 7y ago
    This. Adding to that, drugs do help accelerate the whole 'friendship' process a lot.
    - spicyusername 7y ago
      This really only works when you live a lifestyle capable of supporting casual to heavy drug use, which is something that many people don't have due to their values, responsibilities, etc.
      - ncldmmt 7y ago
        You use drugs everyday when you smoke, drink alcohol or coffee. It's not really about the substance itself (which you may choose to take small to moderate amounts if you don't want to sustain a habit) but the personalities of people you meet there and the bonding over shared sensations. In other words, it's easier to befriend the kind of people who trip and rave than the kind of people 'values' and 'responsibilities' forbid them from doing so.
        TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
        People with values and responsibilities tend to make friends in places like churches, which disproves your point.
        ncldmmt 7y ago
        >People with values and responsibilities tend to make friends in places like churches What? Are you implying that people with values and responsibilities can't be atheist or irreligious? How about people who don't go to church due to not living in a country as religious as the land of the free, do they lack values or responsibilities? Also how does that relate to my previous post? I just don't understand your post at all.
- jdkee 7y ago
  Second with boardgaming. Regularly playing competitive games in a friendly atmosphere can lead to new friendships in your 40s, as I have found out. Boardgaming can satisfy the three conditions for making new friends: ". . . proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other." See https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-friends-as-an-adult.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-...
- xiler 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
- _bxg1 7y ago
  https://www.meetup.com/ https://www.meetup.com/ is along these lines, but it's been around for years so it's obviously not a complete solution. There are special-interest groups on there but also broader "I'm in my 20s/30s and just want to be social" groups.
  - themarkn 7y ago
    Meetup works really well in my city. Recently a few friends started a meetup group for a taco night with other folks in the tech scene- no speakers, no frameworks, just some people getting together after work. Some of the group that set up the event came, but because it was on meetup, several total strangers joined us and we all got to hang out and shoot the breeze. Several of the people who showed up were people working remote jobs who don’t have an after work socializing option when they want one. Thanks one example, but shows the overall idea: anybody going to a meetup event has already accepted that this a publicly known event where there will probably be some new people, and wants to socialize with new people too.
- U3RsZW9dziDY0hC 7y ago
  Where are things like the rotary club, the elks lodge, the masons? Freemason here. These groups are right where they always have been and, speaking for the Masons at least, are always interested in new members. Find a lodge in your area by googling "<your state/country> grand lodge" and drop them an email. You just might find what you're looking for.
  - RhysU 7y ago
    Hah, just wrote almost word for word the same response.
  - hasbot 7y ago
    But what do Freemasons do? How do I know if I'm right for the organization?
  - Smithalicious 7y ago
    There's something oddly delightful about the contrast between "freemasons are a secret shadowy club wanting to take over the world" and "we're always looking for members, just drop us an email". What do Freemasons actually do? Why would one join?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- BlueGh0st 7y ago
  I find that a major barrier to meeting people is simply money. I live in a large city but there are very few public gathering places appropriate for socializing. Time is up there too, but that often ties back to money for many of today's youth.
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  I'm curious what you mean by "Hobby/activity groups are frequently too uncentered, culturally."
- diediesel 7y ago
  Strange society where friendships need to be made via organisations. What about the good old chat at a pub or somewhere else and keeping friendships?
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    Pubs arguably were community organizations. This days, though, a lot of people find it unsavory to spend their time around others who are consuming alcohol. Also, when political and social faultlines run deep, not everyone is confortable in environments where there is no guarantee that the other people there share one's worldview and ethics.
- cheald 7y ago
  Brazillian jiujitsu has been wonderful for me in this regard. When you train regularly with folks, those friendships can't help but develop.
- Accujack 7y ago
  Agreed. In fact, some of the best social organizations are the ones forced on us by random chance... neighborhoods are like this. Any social group based on a common interest (including board games) won't be a cross section of any culture, simply because it selects from a subset of people in that culture. The default in most neighborhoods now is to not know your neighbors, everyone meets new people to talk with online, and that takes care of that impulse. I've often thought it would be good to develop some sort of geographically based system of community for the Internet, where everyone is included in communities and sub-communities based on their physical location. So, a group of people formed by you and the people whose houses border your own, another group overlapping with that one for your neighbor's house and the ones that border it, a bigger group for the block and surrounding blocks, a bigger one for your part of the city, etc. Edit: Forgot to explain... you'd chat, post pictures, etc social media style within the groups, and you'd be able to direct your visibility by choosing how you chat. Kind of like being in an MMORPG game, where you can use one kind of chat to talk to your group, another for your guild, another for the zone you're in, and another for the whole world. Each person could publish anything that interested them, from pictures to links to information, and send invites to people in the local area for events or discussions. The hard part is that people have to be automatically attached to these communities - there are a lot of people who won't care enough to opt in, there are still a lot of people who don't have internet access, there has to be policing and moderation. It'd be necessary to work out in detail and law how to avoid its abuse, but that's true of most technology.
  - taurath 7y ago
    Nextdoor I think was an attempt at that, but it turned out that its mostly a place to talk about fears and potential problems and strangers in the neighborhood rather than bringing anyone together, for anything other than trading stuff. I think its one of the downsides of the multiculturalism is that the common denominator in terms of culture is smaller - becoming more frequently that you just straight up don't talk to neighbors because you don't trust their motives or beliefs. As a 30-something fairly liberal queer person, I'll have only very light and shallow conversations with my elderly neighbors, because I know they're in their house with Fox News on all day, and would vote for people who'd take away my rights any day. That doesn't mean I don't help them load heavy groceries out of their cars, or offer to help with something every once in a while, but there's this big barrier of culture and especially what is "acceptable" between us.
bitwize 7y ago
Yeah? And? Maybe many of us find a few friends we really like and are good to go with those people. Quality > quantity.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  I mean, yeah maybe, but it looks like that's not the case. Apparently 3/4 of people are lonely. Choose your source, they all seem to say the same thing. https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+americans+are+lonely https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+americans+are+lonel...
- closeparen 7y ago
  As an introvert, I’m slowly coming around to the idea that quantity can be a prerequisite to quality. It’s hard to build the right group of people when the few you’re currently exposed to aren’t that.
  - hasbot 7y ago
    I realized a few years ago that not knowing anyone at a party is better than going to a party knowing everyone and not wanting to talk to a single one of them.
NTDF9 7y ago
Too much time at work. Too less time building relationships. You know, run of the mill relationships with friends at bars, church, local park.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  Exactly work
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
I'm not sure I follow the implications - what were those numbers a decade ago? A generation? I might also suggest that evite.com may not be the best resource from which to get information you'll want to act on.
dpc_pw 7y ago
It's hard. They might have secretly voted for Trump/Hilary. /s
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  I wish this wasn't downvoted. It's sarcastic, but not inflammatory, and the political/idealogical divide in the US is a real contributor to this problem, I think.
bynkman 7y ago
I guess I'm an aberration. I'm 40+ and I'm an introvert; and I've made at least six good, new friends in the last three years. I will say that all but one of those new friends can be attributed to hobbies and interests.
throwaway04719 7y ago
I'm not American but I don't know how it's possible. Maybe I'm still young, maybe I'm living through special circumstances that will never occur again, but I make friend circles regularly. It rather snowballs easily: you get into a circle, befriend some people of the circle who introduce you to their own circles etc. I'm not especially charismatic or extravert, but I do have a range of weird/niche/obscure hobbies that are easy for people to bond over. I'm also very party-going, that may help. I find that if you take an interest in people (actually listening to what they say), things (discover new hobbies) and cultures you can never run out of things to share. You also need not to be easily shocked by what you encounter. I also noticed that American workplaces tend to be very sanitized environments where 'mingling' beyond a very casual level or having any deep discussion (about things like, say, religion or politics) is frowned upon and seen as 'unprofessional'. People getting fired or transfered for romantic relationships and stuff. That plus the rise of online dating (which means you can just pick people as in a supermarket, as it were, use them to fulfill whatever emotional needs you have, and discard - ghost - them without having to go through this messy social circle thingy) means there are less avenues for this 'circle snowball' effect. What a shame.
- spicyusername 7y ago
  This definitely tends to change for many people as they age. Focusing on your career or raising a family removes a lot of the time and/or energy you have to dedicate to these kinds of activities.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  That all takes time. In America we work a rediculous amount to survive.
ericmcer 7y ago
Is it even possible to maintain more than 2-3 close friendships as an adult? My strongest social activity with friends lately has sadly been playing video games together and chatting on discord. It’s kinda lame but the only way to do something together when you can only spare an hour or two.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  One of my friend groups is around this too but I don't think it's lame at all! I find we have that same sense of camaraderie online as I do with my soccer team!
pjc50 7y ago
See also Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" (2000): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
troydavis 7y ago
Good luck trying to find a copy of this survey or its methodology. As of this comment, a primary source or anything like it doesn't seem to exist online. Turns out it's a "PR survey": https://www.onepoll.us/pr-surveys/ https://www.onepoll.us/pr-surveys/ -- created by a company that's "uniquely positioned to offer data-led content which is guaranteed to grab headlines." Perhaps your business wants a "Personal spring clean" survey or a "Things that baffle women about men" survey; if so, these are your people. Basically, it's a press release that happens to contain some numbers.

78 points by Vaslo 7y ago

mrtweetyhack 7y ago

Who keeps doing studies on me?

mikelyons 7y ago

I made a new friend this year, but only because we both were on the verge of suicide. (we're better now)

zepto 7y ago

Meaningless without comparison to other places or times where it is different.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

abc_lisper 7y ago

I thought I was a aberration, but I am among average. Whippie! :D

taurath 7y ago

Our society is desperate for more social organizations in real life. Where are things like the rotary club, the elks lodge, the masons? Cultures that live in the real world? Businesses to support those groups? Fan groups seem to do okay, with conventions that make meeting up regularly a part of the culture. Board gamer groups do a decent job of mixing in the low range. Its hard to find places in society where people go to meet other people. Bars are sort of them, but you tend to meet a lot of alcoholics. Hobby/activity groups are frequently too uncentered, culturally.

babaganoosh89 7y ago
Rave/music scene is where a lot of people make friends too.
- thatswrong0 7y ago
  Yep that’s exactly it for me. I’ve made 3 really close friends in the past 4 years and tons of other acquaintances/ friends through my local music scene.
- ncldmmt 7y ago
  This. Adding to that, drugs do help accelerate the whole 'friendship' process a lot.
  - spicyusername 7y ago
    This really only works when you live a lifestyle capable of supporting casual to heavy drug use, which is something that many people don't have due to their values, responsibilities, etc.
    - ncldmmt 7y ago
      You use drugs everyday when you smoke, drink alcohol or coffee. It's not really about the substance itself (which you may choose to take small to moderate amounts if you don't want to sustain a habit) but the personalities of people you meet there and the bonding over shared sensations. In other words, it's easier to befriend the kind of people who trip and rave than the kind of people 'values' and 'responsibilities' forbid them from doing so.
      - TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
        People with values and responsibilities tend to make friends in places like churches, which disproves your point.
        ncldmmt 7y ago
        >People with values and responsibilities tend to make friends in places like churches What? Are you implying that people with values and responsibilities can't be atheist or irreligious? How about people who don't go to church due to not living in a country as religious as the land of the free, do they lack values or responsibilities? Also how does that relate to my previous post? I just don't understand your post at all.
jdkee 7y ago
Second with boardgaming. Regularly playing competitive games in a friendly atmosphere can lead to new friendships in your 40s, as I have found out. Boardgaming can satisfy the three conditions for making new friends: ". . . proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other." See https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-friends-as-an-adult.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-...
xiler 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
_bxg1 7y ago
https://www.meetup.com/ https://www.meetup.com/ is along these lines, but it's been around for years so it's obviously not a complete solution. There are special-interest groups on there but also broader "I'm in my 20s/30s and just want to be social" groups.
- themarkn 7y ago
  Meetup works really well in my city. Recently a few friends started a meetup group for a taco night with other folks in the tech scene- no speakers, no frameworks, just some people getting together after work. Some of the group that set up the event came, but because it was on meetup, several total strangers joined us and we all got to hang out and shoot the breeze. Several of the people who showed up were people working remote jobs who don’t have an after work socializing option when they want one. Thanks one example, but shows the overall idea: anybody going to a meetup event has already accepted that this a publicly known event where there will probably be some new people, and wants to socialize with new people too.
U3RsZW9dziDY0hC 7y ago
Where are things like the rotary club, the elks lodge, the masons? Freemason here. These groups are right where they always have been and, speaking for the Masons at least, are always interested in new members. Find a lodge in your area by googling "<your state/country> grand lodge" and drop them an email. You just might find what you're looking for.
- RhysU 7y ago
  Hah, just wrote almost word for word the same response.
- hasbot 7y ago
  But what do Freemasons do? How do I know if I'm right for the organization?
- Smithalicious 7y ago
  There's something oddly delightful about the contrast between "freemasons are a secret shadowy club wanting to take over the world" and "we're always looking for members, just drop us an email". What do Freemasons actually do? Why would one join?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
BlueGh0st 7y ago
I find that a major barrier to meeting people is simply money. I live in a large city but there are very few public gathering places appropriate for socializing. Time is up there too, but that often ties back to money for many of today's youth.
PeterStuer 7y ago
I'm curious what you mean by "Hobby/activity groups are frequently too uncentered, culturally."
diediesel 7y ago
Strange society where friendships need to be made via organisations. What about the good old chat at a pub or somewhere else and keeping friendships?
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  Pubs arguably were community organizations. This days, though, a lot of people find it unsavory to spend their time around others who are consuming alcohol. Also, when political and social faultlines run deep, not everyone is confortable in environments where there is no guarantee that the other people there share one's worldview and ethics.
cheald 7y ago
Brazillian jiujitsu has been wonderful for me in this regard. When you train regularly with folks, those friendships can't help but develop.
Accujack 7y ago
Agreed. In fact, some of the best social organizations are the ones forced on us by random chance... neighborhoods are like this. Any social group based on a common interest (including board games) won't be a cross section of any culture, simply because it selects from a subset of people in that culture. The default in most neighborhoods now is to not know your neighbors, everyone meets new people to talk with online, and that takes care of that impulse. I've often thought it would be good to develop some sort of geographically based system of community for the Internet, where everyone is included in communities and sub-communities based on their physical location. So, a group of people formed by you and the people whose houses border your own, another group overlapping with that one for your neighbor's house and the ones that border it, a bigger group for the block and surrounding blocks, a bigger one for your part of the city, etc. Edit: Forgot to explain... you'd chat, post pictures, etc social media style within the groups, and you'd be able to direct your visibility by choosing how you chat. Kind of like being in an MMORPG game, where you can use one kind of chat to talk to your group, another for your guild, another for the zone you're in, and another for the whole world. Each person could publish anything that interested them, from pictures to links to information, and send invites to people in the local area for events or discussions. The hard part is that people have to be automatically attached to these communities - there are a lot of people who won't care enough to opt in, there are still a lot of people who don't have internet access, there has to be policing and moderation. It'd be necessary to work out in detail and law how to avoid its abuse, but that's true of most technology.
- taurath 7y ago
  Nextdoor I think was an attempt at that, but it turned out that its mostly a place to talk about fears and potential problems and strangers in the neighborhood rather than bringing anyone together, for anything other than trading stuff. I think its one of the downsides of the multiculturalism is that the common denominator in terms of culture is smaller - becoming more frequently that you just straight up don't talk to neighbors because you don't trust their motives or beliefs. As a 30-something fairly liberal queer person, I'll have only very light and shallow conversations with my elderly neighbors, because I know they're in their house with Fox News on all day, and would vote for people who'd take away my rights any day. That doesn't mean I don't help them load heavy groceries out of their cars, or offer to help with something every once in a while, but there's this big barrier of culture and especially what is "acceptable" between us.

bitwize 7y ago

Yeah? And? Maybe many of us find a few friends we really like and are good to go with those people. Quality > quantity.

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
I mean, yeah maybe, but it looks like that's not the case. Apparently 3/4 of people are lonely. Choose your source, they all seem to say the same thing. https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+americans+are+lonely https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+americans+are+lonel...
closeparen 7y ago
As an introvert, I’m slowly coming around to the idea that quantity can be a prerequisite to quality. It’s hard to build the right group of people when the few you’re currently exposed to aren’t that.
- hasbot 7y ago
  I realized a few years ago that not knowing anyone at a party is better than going to a party knowing everyone and not wanting to talk to a single one of them.

NTDF9 7y ago

Too much time at work. Too less time building relationships. You know, run of the mill relationships with friends at bars, church, local park.

nickthemagicman 7y ago
Exactly work

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

I'm not sure I follow the implications - what were those numbers a decade ago? A generation? I might also suggest that evite.com may not be the best resource from which to get information you'll want to act on.

dpc_pw 7y ago

It's hard. They might have secretly voted for Trump/Hilary. /s

happytoexplain 7y ago
I wish this wasn't downvoted. It's sarcastic, but not inflammatory, and the political/idealogical divide in the US is a real contributor to this problem, I think.

bynkman 7y ago

I guess I'm an aberration. I'm 40+ and I'm an introvert; and I've made at least six good, new friends in the last three years. I will say that all but one of those new friends can be attributed to hobbies and interests.

throwaway04719 7y ago

I'm not American but I don't know how it's possible. Maybe I'm still young, maybe I'm living through special circumstances that will never occur again, but I make friend circles regularly. It rather snowballs easily: you get into a circle, befriend some people of the circle who introduce you to their own circles etc. I'm not especially charismatic or extravert, but I do have a range of weird/niche/obscure hobbies that are easy for people to bond over. I'm also very party-going, that may help. I find that if you take an interest in people (actually listening to what they say), things (discover new hobbies) and cultures you can never run out of things to share. You also need not to be easily shocked by what you encounter. I also noticed that American workplaces tend to be very sanitized environments where 'mingling' beyond a very casual level or having any deep discussion (about things like, say, religion or politics) is frowned upon and seen as 'unprofessional'. People getting fired or transfered for romantic relationships and stuff. That plus the rise of online dating (which means you can just pick people as in a supermarket, as it were, use them to fulfill whatever emotional needs you have, and discard - ghost - them without having to go through this messy social circle thingy) means there are less avenues for this 'circle snowball' effect. What a shame.

spicyusername 7y ago
This definitely tends to change for many people as they age. Focusing on your career or raising a family removes a lot of the time and/or energy you have to dedicate to these kinds of activities.
nickthemagicman 7y ago
That all takes time. In America we work a rediculous amount to survive.

ericmcer 7y ago

Is it even possible to maintain more than 2-3 close friendships as an adult? My strongest social activity with friends lately has sadly been playing video games together and chatting on discord. It’s kinda lame but the only way to do something together when you can only spare an hour or two.

scarejunba 7y ago
One of my friend groups is around this too but I don't think it's lame at all! I find we have that same sense of camaraderie online as I do with my soccer team!

pjc50 7y ago

See also Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" (2000): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

troydavis 7y ago

Good luck trying to find a copy of this survey or its methodology. As of this comment, a primary source or anything like it doesn't seem to exist online. Turns out it's a "PR survey": https://www.onepoll.us/pr-surveys/ https://www.onepoll.us/pr-surveys/ -- created by a company that's "uniquely positioned to offer data-led content which is guaranteed to grab headlines." Perhaps your business wants a "Personal spring clean" survey or a "Things that baffle women about men" survey; if so, these are your people. Basically, it's a press release that happens to contain some numbers.