The Friendship Paradox: ‘Americans now spend less than three hours a week with friends, compared with more than six hours a decade ago. Instead, we’re spending ever more time alone.’
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/loneliness-epidemic-friendship-shortage/679689/?taid=66e7daf9c846530001aa4d26&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
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For a [study](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0305834) published in July, Natalie Pennington, a communications professor at Colorado State University, and her co-authors surveyed nearly 6,000 American adults about their friendships.
The researchers found that Americans reported having an average of about four or five friends, which is similar to past estimates. Very few respondents—less than 4 percent—reported having no friends.
Although most of the respondents were satisfied with the number of friends they had, more than 40 percent felt they were not as emotionally close to their friends as they’d like to be, and a similar number wished they had more time to spend with their friends.
Americans feel
>that longingness there a struggle to figure out how to communicate and connect and make time for friendship.