In the second year of the pandemic, with our ability to gather curtailed and social activities severely reduced, I began to wonder about the toll it was taking on social ties, especially friendships. In May 2021, we published one of the first major studies dedicated to understanding these varied and valuable relationships.
The results were not encouraging. The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss documented a dramatic decline in the size of Americans’ friendship circles. Compared to just three decades ago, Americans today have far fewer close friends, are less likely to have a best friend, and younger Americans rely less on their friends than they once did. But not all Americans were experiencing the same precipitous social decline. In an op-ed published shortly after the report came out, I flagged the gendered nature of this divide:
This friendship recession is particularly bad for men. The percentage of men with at least six close friends fell by half since 19…
