What's Causing the Male Friendship Recession？
Episode Stats
Summary
According to a recent survey, the percentage of men with at least six close friends has fallen by half since 1990, and men today are five times more likely to say they don't even have a single close friend than they were 30 years ago. What are the reasons for this seeming friendship recession among men today? To find out, I talked to the man who conducted the survey to try to find out. His name is Daniel Cox, and he's the Director of the Survey Center on American Life.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast according to a
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recent survey the percentage of men with at least six close friends has fallen by half since 1990
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and men today are five times more likely to say they don't even have a single close friend than
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they were 30 years ago what are the reasons for this seeming friendship recession among men today
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i talked to the man who conducted that survey to try to find out his name is daniel cox and he's
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the director of the survey center on american life today on the show daniel takes on a tour of the
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state of friendship among modern american men beginning with the fact that men today have
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fewer friends and feel less emotionally connected than ones they do have we explore the irony that
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while people have long said that traditional norms of masculinity are what's holding men back from
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having fulfilling relationships it's younger men who are more progressive on those norms who are
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struggling the most to make friends daniel talks about the fact that the male friendship recession
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isn't pandemic related but rather seems to be linked to the weakening of ties to community
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institutions like church the changing nature of work and the fact that americans are spending more
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and more time with their families from there we go down a bunch of interesting avenues including
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the fact that husbands rely more on their wives for emotional support than vice versa why daniel
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finds it concerning that young men today are more likely to first talk about their problems with
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their parents rather than with their friends than was true 30 years ago and the irony that single
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men are struggling the most to make friends even though they need them the most out of the show
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is over check out our show notes at aom.is friendship recession all right daniel cox welcome to the show
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thanks for having me so you did a recent survey for the survey center on american life and it was
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about friendship and you found that americans overall have fewer friends than they did a few decades ago
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but where things get really interesting is how things break down across gender lines
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how does this decline compare in men versus women like what are the numbers there yeah so we look back
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over about three decades and one of the things we did with this poll is we looked at what the gallup
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survey had done in 1990 that was the one of the most recent times they had done a survey on friendship
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it's it's not a topic that gets polled a lot and we looked at the numbers there we replicated some of
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their questions and we found really massive declines in the number of close friends that the americans
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reported having so in 1990 55 of men had at least six close friends so six or more and in our latest poll
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only 27 about half as many had that many friends that's great and was the decline in women as stark
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no it was there was a decline it was a double-digit decline from 41 down to 24
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but not nearly as stark as as for the men the other thing is looking at the other side we found
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that 15 of men today have no close friends including about one in five young men and so that's really
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set out to us so they have no one who they feel no friends who they feel really close to what was
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that number like in 1990 only three percent so you know a five-fold increase over that time period
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okay and we'll talk some more like what we think is going on with the decline in number of friends
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but the other thing the survey hit it was that not only do men have fewer friends than they did in 1990
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but they report being less emotionally connected to the friends they do have and so we've had guests
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on the podcast researchers who studied friendship male friendship in particular and this idea of
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emotional connectivity they they think they some argument they've made is that it's maybe it's not that
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useful because men and women they socialize differently right men tend to do things more
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shoulder to shoulder based around an activity women have more of that face-to-face emotional
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connection and so comparing male and female friends isn't useful isn't it isn't it isn't a fair comparison
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so i mean does it matter if men aren't as emotionally connected to their friends if they as long as they have
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friends yeah so i have i have some thoughts on this and particularly as a father i'm raising two boys
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a three-year-old and a five-year-old and thinking about their social development their their friendships
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and and what i want for them and while i understand like that's a that's a common idea that you know we
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shouldn't compare and and there's just some differences there i think that it misses the mark
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a bit and you know this idea that men and women somehow need different things from their friends
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is is not quite right i think both men and women benefit when they have close intimate relationships
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with their friends in our survey in fact both men and women were less likely to feel alone to feel
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depressed or anxious when they when they had that kind of emotional support from their friends
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so it matters and you know men and women are equally likely to to want these things
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and we know this that just men seek it out more from the women in their life than the men so men
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with female friends are more likely to have emotional support and to get emotional support from their
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friends and we know that married men are much more likely to lean on their spouse whereas married women
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will lean on their spouse but also look to their their friendship network to support them and so
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i think there's this really interesting argument that my former colleague arthur brooks makes and i think
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he makes it quite persuasively when he when he argues that you know what makes all of us happy is is
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having a stable affection mutual understanding and commitment and this is what the best research tells
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us and i think you know he was talking in terms of romantic relationships but it's true for for
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friendships as well good friendships can offer all these things and so you know i think to argue that
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that men somehow don't need this and don't need to make these kind of emotional or intimate connections
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i just i kind of categorically reject it i i think that men are are perfectly capable of expressing
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and experiencing the entire array of human emotions we're just socialized in ways you know to make us
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think it's unnecessary or it feels uncomfortable and we'll get into more like where men get that
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emotional support uh as you mentioned usually it's women some sort of woman whether it's family member
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or their wife but i mean another argument i've heard is that one of the reasons men struggle more
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than women to make friends because you know there's an idea of traditional masculinity that
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prevents them from doing so like the idea that men shouldn't be vulnerable and that's what's keeping
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them from making friends did the survey reveal anything that either supports or calls into question
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that hypothesis yeah i know i think this is a really interesting and and perhaps a bit of a thorny
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question you know when i look at my social media feed in response to this you know i i see liberals
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and conservatives kind of lining up in different camps i think conservatives would argue that that modern
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culture has has you know feminized men in ways that makes it more difficult for men to engage in
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in traditionally masculine activities or pastimes there are fewer all-male spaces and in societally
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we're sort of less accepting of men getting together and doing this kind of thing i don't find that
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terribly convincing you know and liberals conversely argue that you know it is this idea of toxic masculinity
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and that's the root of the problem men are socialized to avoid showing affection particularly to other
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men and that stops them from forming more intimate connections with their male friends and i think
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there's something there although it's not the entire story from an early age it's well known that that
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women are socialized to be more nurturing and relationship oriented than men and men are taught to perceive
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intimacy with other men as you know effeminate or weak or unmanly and then perhaps unnecessary and i think
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homophobia probably plays a role in here somewhere and i think you know it's also true that notions of
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of masculinity reduce the range of even accepted activities that men can engage with you know
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when two men are going out to dinner together one-on-one we think about it differently than if
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it's a man and a woman or two two women getting together and we've even developed some you know kind
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of derogatory terminology to describe it you know it's a mandate but i don't know so like i look back
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so i've studied like looked at male friendship for a long time like my grandfather okay so if you're born
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after 1980 you seemingly grew up in a period where there was sort of a more of a progressive ideal
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of masculinity and so you kind of got away from those traditional norms right you learned about
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like you're steeped in this stuff about being vulnerable sharing your feelings etc etc and you
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think that would help men have more friends today but like we have less friends than our grandfathers
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who you know they were steeped in like traditional ideas of masculinity or even like our great-grandfathers
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i mean man if you go back to like the 19th century you see these letters between men man friends and
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it was like almost like a romance letter so i don't know i mean so what do you think is going on there
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like i i see that i'm like well we're seemingly more progressive about what it means to be a man but
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like we're still have we have worse problems making friends than our grandfathers or great-grandfathers
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yeah i think that's that's totally right and it's one of the things where i would you know not think
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that this is the entire entire story here and why i preface that you know my comments there you know
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looking at our data if you look at how younger men identify in terms of their masculinity they're
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less likely to identify as traditionally masculine but it's younger men who struggle most
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informing and maintaining friendships so this idea that you know if we could just fix you know culturally
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this idea of toxic masculinity things would suddenly be better i think is not the entire story and i think
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we have to look to the institutions the ways that in the places men made friends right whether it's
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church or you know local civic uh engagement all the different ways people can meet like one of the
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interesting things in our polls we found that people are most likely to make close friends now at work
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not through existing friends not in their neighborhood it's it's the workplace and you know there used to be
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you know a really vibrant locally focused sort of community that people could go into engage with
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people who are friends with their neighbors i think that that all this this kind of decline is playing
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a role in our ability to to create and maintain friendships i want to talk about the work component
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in a bit here because also i think the the pandemic and the whole work from home thing has probably
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thrown a wrench in that but another thing we we've heard is in researches that researchers are found is that
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women tend to be more willing to put in the effort and cultivation and maintenance of friendships
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more than men are but do we know why that is i mean were you able to find anything out there with
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your survey yeah i mean we didn't look at that specifically i i do think it's true that the poll
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found that men are engaged in and sort of activity-based friendships like they they have a lot of these
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friends whether it's online you know we asked about online playing video games like younger men are much
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more likely to do this than just about anyone but one of the one of the issues there i think is is
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particularly when you when you're thinking about you know you know getting together for sports or
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hobbies you know hunting all that stuff requires a lot of time and planning and logistics much more
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so than just picking up the phone so you know the more intimate communication-based relationships that
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women are nurturing when their friends are probably just easier to maintain it's just different if
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you're if you're sort of saying hey you know we've got to get together around doing a certain
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activity i mean first and foremost the person has to live relatively close by and you know given how
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far flung we've all become i think that just that creates an added hurdle well let's talk about that
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the role of geographic mobility so that's one dynamic we've heard might be playing in a role
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in the friendship recession amongst men but i mean the one thing i've heard maybe you find confines
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maybe your survey found something different is that compared to previous generations millennials
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millennials are moving less so you think okay if they're moving less they're able to establish some
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sort of routes they're able to make friends so geographic mobility doesn't play a role but did
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your survey find anything different yeah so i think that's right so you know geographic mobility we
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know it's harmful to establishing and maintaining social connections right but if you move a lot
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and any you know kid who moved around a lot growing up knows this you know you know deep down right
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like that it's really hard to maintain friendships if you're moving around a lot it's probably less so
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than it once was with the rise of social media texting and messaging and all that but one of the
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big things that happens when you move is you become disconnected right you you detach from the local
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institutions the clubs places of worship which are really important ways for us to to maintain
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close connections with other people and one of the things that i think is is not really paid attention
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to a lot is you know unlike marriage and our other familial relationships there's not a lot of
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structure and friendships so it's it's sort of whatever you want to make of it so i think when
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they're structured through membership in a in an institution or a club that's really beneficial and
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so i think when people move you become kind of uprooted and one of the things that we know that's
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true with men particularly young men is they're far less likely to be attached to to a religious
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community than previous generations until older men and women and so that is a real loss in terms
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of being able to establish social connections with folks so i mean are millennials moving less
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like i mean is that did you guys find that in your survey yeah i think the best evidence suggests that
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yeah comparatively depending on how you want to find millennials they're not yeah they're not moving
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around a lot they are shifting jobs more okay previous generations that is true but in terms of
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geographic mobility yeah i think it's probably a little bit less all right but but still the job
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mobility we'll call it job mobility could be disrupting friendship formation absolutely and
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again if people if we are disproportionately relying on the workplace for our social life yeah that's
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going to be hugely disruptive well yeah let's talk about this you know work and friends so most a lot
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of friends it sounds like a lot of friendships are made in like they're they're situation based so
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there's church there's club and like a big one is work have you guys been able to figure out
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how the emphasis on using work as a way to make friends how has that impacted american friendship
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with men well you know one of the things i think is going to be something worth watching is what
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happens when more americans want to work remote at least part of the time you know what happens to
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workplace culture what happens to in dc a big thing is happy hours going out to grabbing a drink with
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your co-workers to complain about your boss or whatever and if that happens less often that
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becomes less routinized that's going to be a real loss and i think it's something that probably a lot
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of people haven't thought through that you know when you're remote and i've been remote for almost 18
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months now you just see people less often i mean i i see my spouse a whole heck of a lot but my friends i
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see you know significantly less and you know even some of the kind of incidental contact and
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conversations you have with with your co-workers there's value in that and i think you know even
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if it's more of a friendly acquaintanceship versus a friendship that you know losing those i think are
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are really important for us to to think about when we think about the transition that we're we're making
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here and we have a new poll out just just recently that looked at the employment situation and desire
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for remote work and we're seeing actually that you know i think there's this idea that a lot of people
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want to work remotely they want the flexibility and there's some truth to that but the the there was a
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significant number of americans i think it's more than four and ten who actually said that in-person
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work with their colleagues was their ideal work situation and then the next most popular was
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you know some flexibility so some amount of remote work but still largely based in office and the
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minority view was a full-on remote so i think there is some sense that that people value that kind of
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in-person interaction that workplace can provide so you mentioned church was a place where a lot of
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people make friends and i think we've all read the articles that in america religiosity has been
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declining for the past steeply i can think of the past 10 years i mean what is the number do you have
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any grasp of the numbers like how how sharp the decrease particularly amongst men yeah it's it's
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pretty significant actually my my dissertation was on this topic looking at the decline in
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religiosity among millennials and if you look at the early 1990s that's when the the shift began
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to happen it was around five or six percent of americans had no formal religious affiliation
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now it's up about to about one in four among young adults under the age of 30 you know it's closer
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to 40 and i think for young men it's closer it's closer to half so you know it's it's stark and you
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know certainly some of those folks who don't identify religiously may still be you know connected to
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a church or congregation through their family sort of being culturally connected but by and large
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they're not going off and there's a strong correlation between not having a former religious
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identity and not going to church or religious services yeah i've got a few friends who stopped going
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to church and they say like the one thing they missed the most they didn't realize they'd missed
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the most is just i've got a like a built-in social network i can go someplace and i could at least have
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a chance to make some friends it's like now it's hard i feel like just i had to build that up on my own
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so that's one thing that they typically regret the most about not going to church right yeah and and
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i have a friend i have a you know a friend at work who who went to law school and he's a member of the
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lds church and one of the things that that you know he he talked about was how welcoming everyone
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was he joined a new church and you know people were immediately coming over and introducing
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themselves you know asking them if they needed anything and that you have kind of a built-in
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community no matter where you go and i think that's yeah that's a you know a big loss i mean we could
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talk for a whole episode about you know religious decline and what that means socially civically
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politically but but i think it is you know when we think about our declining social connections like
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that's a big that's a big piece of it well that was also disrupted by the pandemic for a while a
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lot of churches were going online doing remote or paired back services significantly i mean so did
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you guys do a survey like what the pandemic did to friendships did that cause a decline in the number
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of friends or feeling that people had friends did that decline as well so we did a really interesting
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survey project in the middle of 2020 during in the midst of the pandemic and it did affect our
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social lives and there's there's no doubt and we did this survey that looked at people's social
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networks and and so how we we got at this was we asked people to to name up to seven different people
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in their life who they talked to about important problems over the last in the last six months so
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these are people who who were close these these weren't people who were just you know joe or jane
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co-worker or an acquaintance these are people who had a close connection to the person and then we
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you know some people mentioned three people that's a bunch of four and one of the things we saw
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is that this was also done in 2013 there's a pretty steep decline in the number of these close social
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connections people had their people's social networks we found were shrinking and we asked in the
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survey because we were in the pandemic you know how much of this is due to the pandemics people
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who mentioned they had zero close social connections and only about a third said it was
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directly due to the pandemic so for two-thirds of people there's there's sort of larger forces at play
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here than than just you know being quarantined and socially isolated for for over 12 months we're
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going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors
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and now back to the show all right so situational there's like one of the reasons that it's causing
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decline in male friendships is the situations have changed people are relying on work for friends
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instead of neighborhoods or civic organizations or church but work jobs can be mobile because you're
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constantly changing jobs so you don't have a chance to maintain or even establish friends
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another factor i've heard that's playing a role in the decline of friendship is that people are
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spending more time with their families than with their friends than people did in the past did your
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survey find anything about that yeah so this is something that you know i looked at and other
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people looked at as well and and particularly for parents and i speak as one of you know a parent of
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young children the the amount of time parents are investing in their children has increased
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dramatically and that just it simply takes away time from other things you might do from your your
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hobbies from your work from your friends and so that's a that's a big big piece of the puzzle that
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we are focusing much more on our families our spouses than than we were previously some of this might
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have to do with the millennial generation being sort of socialized and and you know because this that's
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the cohort that is having you know establishing families right now socialized to to really be
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emphasizing families but i think there's some evidence that that might actually be changing now
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again in this in this more recent survey and we asked the question about what is essential for living
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a fulfilling life what kind of things is it you're being married is it having just a romantic partner
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is it children is it having a good job is it money and then we also asked whether it was friends and
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more americans mentioned having good friends was essential to living fulfilling life than anything
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else than being married than having kids having a good job so that like what people think about the
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essential ingredients for a good life is is changing i you know i don't know how quickly people will act
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on it because one of the interesting things there's there's some there's some dissonance there you
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know we we say we talk a big game about the importance of friends but we don't actually devote the time
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towards it like if you look at the american time use survey which just looks at how people are
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spending their time we devote very little time to our friends compared to other relationships
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and it's actually according to at least the time you survey that's shrinking over the last decade or so
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well to the topic of men spending more time with their family particularly for that emotional support
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than with their friends i mean i think you there was part of your survey that found that young men are
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more likely to go talk to their parents about a personal problem than first take their problem to
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their friends what was the numbers there like yeah so this was one of the the more worrisome things in
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the poll for me that we found that 36 of young men go to their parents first when facing a personal
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problem compared to 24 of young women and young men are are much less likely to rely on their friends
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than than they used to and you know as a parent i think parents are kind of great you know they
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are the people that provide us with unconditional love and support they're ready and willing to you
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know so hopefully support us financially and you know emotionally but it's also a unique relationship
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and it's not an equal relationship either where there's the the idea of reciprocity you know giving
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and getting in in roughly equal measure and that's what friendship really requires and and so you
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know if young men are getting this stuff from their parents you know the parents are gonna be around
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forever and again it's a unique relationship so i i think it could be hampering their ability to to
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establish social connections with with their peers and the big thing and one of the reasons i think that
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this is so high now is that more young people are living at home than any time since the great
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depression and that's largely due to economic circumstances and and covid so more than 52 or
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more than half 52 percent of young adults are living at home it's greater among young men and i think this
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this close proximity to their parents you know makes them more inclined to seek out their support and
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advice first as opposed to to their friends and you think this could be an issue because it's not
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allowing them to grow as a as a man yeah just establish their own social networks to build
00:24:00.960
them out you know that's sort of the one of the important parts of being an adult is establishing
00:24:05.360
your own relationships figuring out you know what works doesn't work and so i think that you know
00:24:11.520
more than anything is is why that's really problematic the other thing too is i don't i mean this might sound
00:24:16.880
kind of mean but i think parents might not have any good answers for you because like they they might
00:24:22.960
they've they've had a completely different experience right and so if you're going to them
00:24:27.200
like i can't get a job and your dad who like you got a factory job right out of high school
00:24:32.320
and retired and has a pension like what is your dad going to tell you well go out there hit the
00:24:38.400
pavement and you'll find a job it's like well it's not how it works or romantic relationships or anything
00:24:42.480
like yeah i mean like your peers are really really important and all this stuff and navigating
00:24:46.400
all the things that we have to learn in adulthood you know parents can provide a and you know really
00:24:51.760
helpful backdrop but but i think it's our our peers our our friends that really allow us to to
00:24:58.240
grow yeah dating i don't have any i don't think i have any good advice for dating for my kids uh
00:25:04.720
like a tinder like i don't know like what's your profile picture i have no clue what do you do when
00:25:09.600
you get ghosted i have no idea that sounds terrible some and there's some things you probably
00:25:14.880
don't want to share with your parents right like that's you know that's totally understandable and
00:25:18.320
so i think yeah to the extent that that men can again establish their own relationship with their
00:25:23.840
friends i think that you know will be important for the rest of their lives and we know this like
00:25:28.000
that we know that friendship matters for the entire duration of your life it's not just important for
00:25:32.480
when you're young or before you get married there there is in fact some research that says among seniors
00:25:38.960
friendship becomes even more important than than family family relationships so besides going to
00:25:45.200
their parents for emotional support if they're married men will tend to go to their spouses first
00:25:51.760
before they go to a friend about a problem how has that changed from previous decades yeah so so we
00:25:59.440
know that in our survey americans are talking to their spouse first when they have a problem and
00:26:04.800
that's more than anyone else not surprising right it's a it's a unique relationship but we found the
00:26:09.840
number of people relying on our spouse increased by 10 points over the over the last 30 or so years
00:26:16.480
so men rely on their spouse more than the women do and there's like a 20 point gap there so women
00:26:23.360
will many women will go to a friend first or a family member whereas men were all you know nearly
00:26:28.880
exclusively reliant on their spouse and is that because like men feel they can't go to a friend
00:26:34.320
about this stuff and they just got to go to their their wife yeah and i and i think the intimacy that
00:26:40.480
women have with a number of different people a lot of men only have with their spouse and i think this
00:26:45.600
is the problem you know returning to our you know we were talking about earlier it puts a lot of
00:26:49.520
pressure on wives to to be that you know the absolute everything in terms of emotional and personal
00:26:56.880
support if i can't have these you know difficult conversations if i can't get the emotional support from
00:27:01.760
a friend well i've got to get it from somewhere or i don't get it at all which is this entirely
00:27:06.720
different problem but it puts a lot more strain on a marriage when you can't you know when your wife
00:27:11.760
has to be everything for you so i think that's something to really consider men do their wives
00:27:17.280
the favor by you know reaching out and having good friendships so they have a broader group of folks
00:27:25.200
to rely on when when things get tough no yeah that's one of the advice that i give dudes who get
00:27:30.560
married when you first get married i feel like there's a tendency i just want to spend time with
00:27:33.120
my wife she's awesome she's great there's that honeymoon but at a certain point you have to start
00:27:37.600
making male friends it's going to be better for your relationship if you do absolutely so another
00:27:43.200
thing i've heard and read from friendship experts is that one of the reasons that men tend to have
00:27:47.600
fewer friends than women is that men tend to rely on their wives for their social networks so i can
00:27:53.360
see why that would result in a less robust social network because you just have this one person who's
00:27:57.920
providing your social calendar but it did provide some connections so there was a benefit there one
00:28:03.920
thing i i thought of as i was reading through your survey that could also be contributing to the
00:28:08.480
decline in male friendship today is that men today are getting married later or they're not getting
00:28:13.920
married at all so you have like this double whammy going on you have men who aren't prioritizing
00:28:18.240
friendships themselves trying to make friendships on their own and they don't have a wife for those
00:28:23.760
social connections either yeah no i i think that that is something that we found in our day that
00:28:29.760
that single men particularly had significantly fewer friends than married men and to single women
00:28:35.440
so marriage i think is often set up as kind of an antagonist or set up in opposition to friendship
00:28:42.800
but really you know marriage can benefit you know for the reason we talked about you know you suddenly
00:28:48.800
gain a lot of social connections through your your spouse a lot of us will meet additional friends
00:28:53.840
through our spouse our spouse's work so there's a lot of social benefit that is that is gained from
00:28:59.280
getting married and we actually see this interestingly that men are more likely to value marriage right
00:29:06.320
now and to say that it's essential than women are which is really interesting and i think it's because
00:29:12.560
men receive so much from marriage right they get you know someone they're emotionally connected with
00:29:17.360
someone who's committed to their welfare and well-being and then women are like yeah i get this
00:29:21.680
from my marriage but i also get this from my friends and and that is something that men are lacking or
00:29:26.160
at least a lot of men are lacking yeah and also when you get married typically you have kids it's
00:29:31.200
often something you do and like having kids is another way to expand your social networks you're
00:29:35.760
going to get involved in scouts the school you might coach peewee baseball or whatever um and so you
00:29:42.000
might not become best friends with the parents but like you at least put yourself in a situation where
00:29:46.800
friendships could be made yeah absolutely we're we're in a phase right now that we do play dates like
00:29:52.160
every weekend so we're hanging out and talking with our parents and you know doing the the
00:29:58.080
brunch thing with where the kids are playing in the other room and and it's great and and what happens
00:30:01.600
i think when we get older and our lives get really busy is we kind of put friendships on we just want
00:30:08.240
to kind of add them on to things we're already doing and and fit into our lives and then that's
00:30:12.400
those are the kind of friendships that that we create and maintain and there's value there right they
00:30:16.640
they may not become really intimate friends or a close friend or even the best friend but there
00:30:22.400
there's still a lot of value in those in those relationships have you like in your survey did
00:30:27.040
you figure out like what people are doing if like they don't have friends they're not married they don't
00:30:31.760
have kids like what are people just like they just go their their house and just sit by themselves
00:30:37.120
like what what do people do they're they're having you heard they're they're fixing up old vans and
00:30:41.360
driving them across the country okay looking for friends yeah well i think that you know there's
00:30:48.720
there's research that it shows that the amount of time where we've spent in the office and on our work
00:30:53.360
has increased pretty significantly so we're definitely pouring more time into work we just again had this
00:30:59.760
new survey come out and people are engaged not only in full-time jobs but pursuing side hustles
00:31:05.280
as well and so i think we've been kind of oriented to think that that's what you need right you you know
00:31:12.960
to be successful you you you need to have a good job and career you need to get married you need to
00:31:17.760
start a family and now we're starting to think like well there's there's a lot else out there and friends
00:31:24.480
are becoming a more important part of the equation and ironically right at the very moment we need more
00:31:31.040
friends our social circles are shrinking right as you mentioned we're you know the average age of
00:31:36.640
of marriage now i think for men is like 30 and for women it's 28 and so we're single longer and for
00:31:43.760
single people friends are really the most important relationship for the most part that we have
00:31:49.360
and we have just fewer of them and so it's it's really challenging i think it's why you're seeing
00:31:55.360
one of the reasons anyway you're seeing this increased levels of loneliness and social isolation and
00:32:00.800
and depression and anxiety among young people this like we haven't we haven't emphasized i think
00:32:06.960
societally and given the tools for people to build and establish lifelong friendships okay so this idea
00:32:14.480
that people they're saying they want friends or friends are going to be important this goes to a
00:32:19.120
question i've been trying to mull over i've been well i've been mulling over for the past few years
00:32:23.040
because every time i have like these loneliness experts come on the podcast i always define loneliness
00:32:28.960
it's a subjective feeling right so you could the idea you can be surrounded with six friends and
00:32:33.120
still feel lonely and isolated or you just have one friend and you feel like well i i'm this is great
00:32:38.080
i hit the jackpot i got this one friend and your survey kind of hinted at that this this is something
00:32:42.800
like this is going on so i think one of the thing you found is that americans with one close friend
00:32:48.960
feel just as lonely or isolated as those without any close friends those with two friends only feel a
00:32:56.320
little less lonely than those with no friends and people with three or fewer friends still regularly
00:33:02.000
feel lonely and isolated but i read that like man you got three friends like that should be plenty
00:33:06.880
and something you'd be happy with but a lot of people don't seem to be and your survey found that only
00:33:12.560
about half of americans feel satisfied with the number of friends and for men um less than half are
00:33:17.840
satisfied and so this gets the question okay some people have friends but even with the friends they have
00:33:22.560
they're not happy with it do we maybe have like too high expectations of what friendship should look
00:33:30.160
like like the number of friends we have and what our friendship should be be like with that person
00:33:35.200
and because those expectations aren't met we we feel lonely does that make sense yeah there's a lot to
00:33:41.600
unpack here and this was uh among the most surprising findings in the poll this this idea that
00:33:48.560
you need a lot of friends right like in terms of of forestalling loneliness and social isolation
00:33:55.200
depression anxiety that it's not just having a best friend or even one or two close friends that
00:34:01.040
matters you you need to have a few and you know the survey didn't get this directly but i have some
00:34:06.480
theories for for why that is and one of which is it it may take you know given the busyness of our
00:34:13.280
our lives it may take having access to more than one friend to to really get the benefit you know
00:34:18.320
you may have a friend who's busy you may have a friend who's married with kids not you know may
00:34:22.400
not be able to i'm going to be available when you need them and so i think like having a broader
00:34:28.320
social network is is really important the other thing that i think and this is not something that
00:34:33.920
i've i've seen a lot and maybe you have some perspective on this too is that friendship groups are
00:34:39.920
something that i'm increasingly interested in and it may be that friendship groups offer some
00:34:44.560
considerable personal benefit you know one person can initiate a get together group pressure may
00:34:49.840
convince people to to come who otherwise may have found an excuse not to and you know to order to have
00:34:56.480
a friendship group you need more than you know two you need more probably more than three and and so i
00:35:01.280
think that there's some benefit there and we know from our survey that a significant number of americans
00:35:06.720
have have friendship groups where people know each other and that is a a a significant benefit to
00:35:14.000
folks and so i think like that's something to think about as well in terms of the you know our
00:35:20.160
expectations and whether they're realistic i think social media in oh so many ways is is not our friend
00:35:27.440
if you'll excuse the expression that you know we see these people out having fun doing really great
00:35:32.560
things people all together you know instagram is is horrible in this way and there's yeah there's
00:35:38.800
idea like wow you know my friends don't do this or i don't you know seem to have the same kind of
00:35:42.320
connection i don't seem to be laughing as much when i'm hanging out with my friends and so i think like
00:35:46.800
it can give us kind of a tilted view when it comes to what we should expect from friendship yeah i think
00:35:53.840
i think that's going on i think our expectations are too high for friendship and we're just supreme
00:35:59.280
we're always going to be disappointed from your survey were you able to get any insights from
00:36:03.440
people who have fulfilling friendships like what are they doing differently than those who
00:36:09.520
don't have fulfilling friendships well one of the things that we we did a little analysis of
00:36:14.800
people who have best friends and one of the questions that we asked well what makes this person your
00:36:20.160
best friend so we actually allowed respondents to to say in their own words what it was that that made this
00:36:27.120
friend special and unique and it was really interesting how many people mentioned how long
00:36:33.040
they had known this person so longevity was really a key part of it and i think it just takes time to
00:36:38.960
build up intimacy and connection so people talk about the shared language among friends and that you
00:36:45.040
don't need to talk often but you need to talk you need to have a similarity drawing from the same
00:36:50.480
experiences so so i think that's kind of a crucial component you know yes you can develop tight
00:36:56.560
relationships maybe over a year or two but you know those those people who are your best friends
00:37:01.920
those really close relationships have been around a while okay so obviously the intent of this survey
00:37:06.640
is to be descriptive rather than prescriptive you're just trying to give people a general lay of the
00:37:11.760
land of a friendship in america today but are there any policy changes or institutional changes or just
00:37:18.240
general takeaways you hope people walk away with after they read your survey results yeah so like
00:37:24.000
professionally i'm i'm agnostic on on policy you know i work in washington dc where everything's
00:37:29.760
political so i really try to stay out of recommending or wanting policy changes but obviously you know when
00:37:36.960
it comes to something you know so basic as friendship i i would love to see groups you know pick it up run
00:37:44.240
with it you know we've identified a pretty significant issue i think and we're going to produce more research on
00:37:49.600
on this topic in the future so definitely stay tuned but you know for me i've been a researcher
00:37:55.600
my entire life i've been i've been doing polling from you know 20 my 20s onward and so i you know i don't
00:38:03.200
really get involved in the policy debates nor do i i have actually you know any good ideas about the
00:38:09.120
correct interventions other than like again culturally societally we should just emphasize friendship you
00:38:14.560
know we should sort of say hey you know what marriage is great there's a lot of great things about
00:38:18.800
marriage but you know if you're looking to build a complete life you've really got to spend some time
00:38:24.400
and think about friendships and you know employers should too and church leaders should as well right
00:38:30.140
like they should think about friendship in a way that you know in the way that people practice it in
00:38:34.920
the way that people think about it so meet them where they are and not try to prescribe something to
00:38:39.260
them well i think the takeaway too and just listening to you talking about the different changes in
00:38:44.520
friendship is okay people seem to be putting an emphasis on friendship but i think the big takeaway
00:38:50.220
is like well if you want friends it's kind of on you now like there's no longer those institutions
00:38:54.780
that are basically support friendship yeah you have work but work is constantly shifting your fellow
00:39:00.380
co-worker could leave jobs or you could leave jobs a lot of people are going to church if you're
00:39:04.700
not going to do that you have to be really intentional about it and make it happen for yourself
00:39:08.740
yeah no i think that's that is at the heart of this thing yeah friendships are really unique in
00:39:14.520
that way there's not the same kind of structure i think as i mentioned earlier they are completely
00:39:18.960
voluntary and they come in a wide variety and something else i would mention too is that you
00:39:25.340
know a friendship doesn't have to to provide you with everything right it doesn't have to be the
00:39:30.120
most intimate the most connected friendship to be worthwhile and to to be a value and so you know
00:39:35.740
i'm talking about from my own experience these friends with the parents we've made through our
00:39:39.980
kids daycare and you know for a lot of these folks yeah we probably won't become close close friends but
00:39:46.040
there's the the friendship and and the community we get are just invaluable to us yeah i think that's
00:39:52.660
a good point i think a lot of times people when they look for a friend they're looking for a friend
00:39:55.520
that will like hit all their sweet spots on their interests and have a lot in common but it's okay to
00:40:00.400
have friends who are okay this is my work friend and this is my peewee baseball parent friend this
00:40:07.160
is my gym friend you don't have to have everything in common to be a friend absolutely well daniel
00:40:12.820
this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the survey and your work
00:40:15.920
so i would absolutely encourage you to you know we're very active on twitter i'm at d cox cox
00:40:22.780
polls so you can you can find our work there and then on our website as well we are at
00:40:28.720
americansurveycenter.org fantastic well daniel cox thanks for time it's been a pleasure
00:40:32.680
thank you so much my guest is daniel cox he's the director of the survey center on american life
00:40:38.020
you can find out the survey that we discussed today at americansurveycenter.org it's under the
00:40:42.760
title american men suffer a friendship recession also check out our show notes at aom.is
00:40:47.080
slash friendship recession we find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic
00:40:50.520
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check our website at art of manliness.com
00:41:01.960
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