Friendship Recession Statistics: The 2026 Numbers

In 1990, just 3% of Americans said they had no close friends. By 2024, it was 17%.

That's wild. I've talked about that number before here, but let me drive it home: One in six adults has nobody they'd call a close friend.

I built this page to be a running list of the statistics I trust. Each one is tied to a source and a year. I'll update it as new data shows up on my Google News alerts or in my inbox.

A quick note on how to read this. I've flagged the freshest figures, and where researchers disagree, I call that out. Good data has caveats. I'd rather give you those figures than a scary number with no context. I also think that so much of these stats are a bit subjective (sigh). But if you want the full story behind where we are and how we got here, start with my guide to what the friendship recession is.

How many adults have no close friends?

This is the headline stat, and it keeps getting worse. The Survey Center on American Life has tracked it for years. The share of Americans with no close friends quadrupled between 1990 and 2021, then kept climbing.

• 17%of Americans had no close friends in 2024, up from 12% in 2021Survey Center on American Life, 2024
• 3% → 12%share with no close friends, 1990 to 2021 (a fourfold rise)Survey Center on American Life, 2021
• 49%now have three or fewer close friends, up from 27% in 1990Survey Center on American Life, 2021
• 13%have ten or more close friends, down from 33% in 1990Survey Center on American Life, 2021

It's not spread evenly. Adults without a college degree are more than twice as likely to have no close friends (24%) as college graduates (10%). I dug into that gap in The Friendship Divide.

How much time we actually spend with friends

We don't just have fewer friends. We spend less time with the ones we have. The clearest read on this comes from economist Bryce Ward, who analyzed the government's American Time Use Survey data.

• 37%drop in time spent with friends since the early 2010sBryce Ward analysis of the American Time Use Survey
• 45%more time spent alone by 15-to-29-year-olds in 2023 than in 2010Our World in Data analysis of the ATUS
• 6h 40mthe amount of time the average American now spends alone each dayBureau of Labor Statistics, 2024

One honest note. That 37% figure is Ward's analysis of the underlying government data, not a number the Bureau of Labor Statistics published on its own. I trust it, but I want you to know where it comes from. The bigger point holds. We traded hangouts for screens, and I wrote about that trade in Put Down Your Phone and Make a Friend.

The men's friendship recession

Men got hit hardest. The decline in men's friendships is the steepest in the whole dataset, and the newest numbers say young men are now the loneliest group in the Western world.

• 55% → 27%share of men with six or more close friends, 1990 to 2021Survey Center on American Life, 2021
• 3% → 15%share of men with no close friends (a fivefold rise)Survey Center on American Life, 2021
• 1 in 5single men have no close friends todayPBS NewsHour, 2024
• 25%of US men aged 15-34 felt lonely much of the day, the loneliest in the WestGallup, 2025

Men also lean on friends far less. Only 21% of men said they got emotional support from a friend in the past week, compared with 41% of women. For the full breakdown, see the men's friendship recession statistics and my piece on the male friendship crisis.

Young adults and Gen Z

You might picture the loneliest person as elderly and alone. The data says otherwise. Young adults consistently report the highest loneliness of any age group.

• ~24%of adults under 30 feel lonely all or most of the time, vs 6% of those 65+Pew Research Center, 2025
• 18 to 25the age band reporting the most loneliness of any groupHarvard Making Caring Common, 2024
• 16%of all US adults feel lonely all or most of the timePew Research Center, 2025

You'll often see an older Cigna survey quoted here, the one that found 79% of Gen Z lonely back in 2020. I'd treat that one carefully. It used a broad definition that catches a lot of people, and it's five years old now. The Pew and Harvard numbers above are fresher and more conservative. I broke down who's actually lonely in the loneliness in America statistics.

Loneliness and your health

This is the part that should change how seriously we take the whole thing. The U.S. Surgeon General issued a formal advisory on it in 2023.

• 15cigarettes a day: the mortality-risk equivalent of chronic social disconnectionU.S. Surgeon General, 2023
• +29%increased risk of heart disease from poor social connectionU.S. Surgeon General, 2023
• +32%increased risk of strokeU.S. Surgeon General, 2023
• +50%higher odds of survival for people with strong social tiesHolt-Lunstad meta-analysis, 2010

Social isolation also raises the risk of dementia in older adults by about 50%. This isn't soft stuff. The research treats weak social connection as a medical risk factor, on par with smoking and obesity. I covered the biology in why texting your friends isn't enough.

Older adults (the newest data)

The freshest large survey landed in December 2025, and it changed the picture in one important way.

• 4 in 10adults over 45 are lonely, up from 35% in 2018AARP, 2025
• 42% vs 37%men over 45 are now lonelier than women, a reversal from 2018AARP, 2025
• 45%of lonely older adults say they have fewer friends than five years agoAARP, 2025

That second number is the one that surprised me. For years the data showed older women more connected than older men. AARP's 2025 survey found that gap has flipped among the 45-plus crowd. Men are now reporting more loneliness.

What the numbers don't agree on

I don't want to hand you a tidy story, because the research isn't tidy. Three honest caveats.

Are men lonelier than women? It depends what you measure. Men report far fewer close friends and far less emotional support. But Pew found men and women feel lonely at roughly equal rates. The clear gap is in friendship quality and support-seeking, not raw loneliness.

Is it getting better or worse? Both, depending on the window. Daily loneliness fell from its 2021 pandemic peak, then ticked back up through 2024, per Gallup. The long-term trend since 1990 is clearly down. The short-term trend is noisy.

Why do the “no close friends” numbers vary? You'll see anywhere from 12% to “nearly 20%” depending on the survey and year. I use the Survey Center on American Life's 17% (2024) because it's the most consistent long-running measure.

It's not hopeless

I always end these on the same note, because it's true. The numbers are bad, but they're not destiny. Every study that documents the decline also points at the fix: repeated, in-person, low-pressure time with the same people.

You don't need a program or an app. You need to be the one who initiates. The single highest-leverage move I know is to host something small. I wrote a whole book about it, The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, and a free guide on how to host a friendship gathering. Start there. Then come back and help me prove these numbers wrong.

Sources

• Survey Center on American Life / AEI — The State of American Friendship (2021) and The Decline in American Friendship (2024)
• Survey Center on American Life — Why Men's Social Circles Are Shrinking (2021)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics — American Time Use Survey, 2024
• Our World in Data — Young Americans are spending much more time alone (2024)
• PBS NewsHour — Why a growing number of American men say they are in a friendship recession (2024)
• Gallup — Younger Men in the U.S. Among the Loneliest in the West (2025)
• Pew Research Center — Men, Women and Social Connections (2025)
• Harvard Making Caring Common — Loneliness in America (2024)
• U.S. Surgeon General — Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation (2023)
• Holt-Lunstad et al. — Social Relationships and Mortality Risk, PLoS Medicine (2010)
• AARP — Disconnected: Loneliness Among Adults 45-Plus (2025)