The pal-demic
The average 30-year-old has shed 4.5 friends since the start of the pandemic. But as swerving mate dates becomes a habit, our social stock is crashing – and those bonds are vital for health. Is it time you started investing in your social life?
It was while rewatching an old Thanksgiving-dinner episode of Friends that Emily Morris realised how out of touch the show was. Not just the fat jokes (though definitely the fat jokes). Not only the shameful lack of diversity in casting, or the constant banter about the male characters (and exclusively the male characters) watching porn. It was the actual concept that felt archaic: friends. Six of them, meeting up daily, doing things together.
Back in their school days, Emily and her pals would squabble over which character they’d each be if they were the protagonists. Today, she’d struggle to get five friends together for a birthday dinner. ‘I could blame it on my friendship group being more spread out, or clashing schedules between those with or without kids. But honestly? I’ve just lost the energy to organise a meet-up,’ the 37-year-old brand strategist from Cambridge tells WH. ‘We drifted during Covid and I don’t think anyone wants to confront the reality of conversation being stilted.’ Over the past three years, ‘me time’ – aonce-elusive concept for Emily back in the days of daily commutes to London and after-work events – has become her default. ‘I wouldn’t say I’m lonely,’ she pauses. ‘But I do feel a bit embarrassed that I don’t really have anyone to message for a drink on Friday night beyond my partner.’
There’s a name for feeling like your social circle is shrinking at pace with your bank balance: the friendship recession. The term was coined in 2021 when the American Perspectives Survey found that 12% of Americans reported having no friends – a trend that represented a fourfold increase since 1990. Particularly affected were 18- to 29-year-old women, 16% of whom said they no longer had regular contact with most of their social circle. Now, more experts are examining this transformation.
Published in March, Sapien Labs’ Mental State Of The World In 2022 report, which involved more than 407,000 participants from 64 countries, discovered people’s ‘social self’ had nosedived over the past 12 months. That metric refers to your ability to maintain meaningful friendships and connections, and again, it was young people who’d lost out the most – 18-to-24-year-olds were more likely to have no close friends than those aged 75 and over. It’s a social shortfall reflected specifically in UK data, too. A report by the think tank Onward revealed that around 20% of 18- to 34-year-olds had one, or no, close friends – triple the number in 2012.
