Americans have fewer close friends than at any point in the last 30 years. The number of men with zero close friends jumped from 3% to 15% since 1990. And the average adult now spends less than 3 hours a week with friends. Down from over 6 hours a decade ago.
This isn’t just about feeling lonely on a Friday night. Researchers say that weak social connections carry the same health risk as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The Surgeon General called it an epidemic. The data backs it up.
I’m Nick Gray, author of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party. I started this site to track and document the friendship recession. I collect the best research, statistics, and journalism on why adults are struggling to make and keep friends. And I write about what’s actually working to fix it.
Featured Articles
Research and Data
- Who’s Actually Lonely in America? The Data Might Surprise You — A deep look at who loneliness hits hardest (it’s not who you’d expect).
- Men’s Friendship Recession: The Statistics and Real Solutions — The numbers behind the male friendship crisis, plus what’s actually helping.
- The Friendship Divide: Why Your Education Level Affects Your Social Life — How class and education shape who has friends and who doesn’t.
Making Friends
- Making Friends as an Adult Is Hard. Here’s the Secret. — Practical advice for anyone who feels stuck.
- Put Down Your Phone and Make a Friend — What the research says about screens, social media, and real connection.
- Why Texting Your Friends Isn’t Enough — The science behind why in-person time matters more than we think.
Men’s Friendships
- One Trip Changed How I Think About Male Friendship — A guys’ trip that challenged everything I thought about how men connect.
- 11 Things I Learned About Why Men Need More Friends — The research, the stories, and what men can do right now.
- Men Used to Write Love Letters to Their Friends — What the history of male friendship tells us about where we went wrong.
About This Site
I built this site because the friendship recession is one of the biggest problems nobody talks about enough. There’s a ton of great research and journalism out there. But it’s scattered across hundreds of publications. I wanted one place where you could find all of it.
Every article on this site is either written by me or hand-picked from top publications with my own commentary added. I also maintain a curated list of 50+ external articles on the topic.
Want to learn more about me? Read my story here. Want to submit an article? Email me.