The American Friendship Project: A report on the status and health of friendship in America

Three surveys—national adult samples in 2022 and 2023 and a multi-university student sample in 2022—find a less apocalyptic friendship picture than prominent accounts suggest. Americans reported more friends and fewer friendless adults than some earlier surveys, and face-to-face meetings, calls and texts remained common.

The tension is qualitative rather than simply numerical: more than 75 percent were satisfied with the number of friends they had, yet more than 40 percent said they were not as close to friends as they wanted. The project measures network structure, friendship quality, support, communication, loneliness and well-being and makes its data available.