Long term, short term

 The General Social Survey has a series of questions about confidence in "the people running" various institutions that has been asked since the early 1970s.  But the GSS was not the first to ask these questions--they were originally from the Harris Poll.  The very first time was in the 1965 survey of college students that I wrote about recently, but they were also asked of a national sample in 1967.  The figure shows average confidence in institutions in 1967 and 2024 (the most recent round of the GSS):

The line indicates equal confidence in both years.  With one exception, they are below the line, meaning average confidence was lower in 2024 than in 1967.  The exception is organized labor, where average confidence was almost exactly the same.  I think that is because organized labor has become less prominent:  there are fewer strikes or the threat of strikes, or large wage increases that might lead to inflation or tax increases.  In 1967, 23% said they had a great deal of confidence and 33% said that they had very little confidence:  in 2024, "great deal" had fallen to 18%, but "very little" had also fallen, to 24%.  So you could say that there's been a move towards indifference.

The other institutions all have substantial declines, but several stand out:

Congress has had the largest decline (-0.82; changes for the executive branch and the Supreme Court are about -0.6).  Science, military, and television have had relatively small declines (-.25 to -.33).  I've discussed confidence in the military before.  For TV, I think it's because people entertainment programming as well as news (questions specifically about TV news show a large decline).  The relatively small decline for "the scientific community" is interesting, since a lot of people have talked about the growth of anti-science attitudes in recent years.  The GSS also asks about medicine, and the decline is considerably larger than the decline for science (-.52 to -.24).  

I looked at confidence in science, medicine, and education in an earlier post, and noted that there was a growing split between liberals and conservatives in the last few years, presumably because of the reaction to Covid.  That was before the 2024 GSS came out, so here are the updated figures:

Very little change from 2022 to 2024.

A drop from 2022 to 2024 among both liberals and conservatives, but larger among conservatives.  Also, liberal confidence increased in 2018 and 2021, so the decline leaves them about where they were in 2016.  With conservatives, confidence is at its lowest level ever.  

Finally, education:

A slight increase from 2022 to 2024 among both liberals and conservatives.  

The liberal/conservative gap for confidence in education and science grew between 2016/8 and 2022, but stayed about the same between 2022 and 2024.  In contrast, the gap for confidence in medicine kept growing.  Why?  My thought is that more people are interested in medicine and feel like they have some basis for offering opinions--they can talk about what happened when they got a vaccine, or someone they know got a vaccine.  As a result, there's more momentum in public opinion when doubts start to grow.  Another possibility is that it was driven by the prominent role of RFK, Jr. in the presidential race.

[Data from the GSS and Odum Institute Data Archive]

Friendship recession, part 4

 I hadn't intended to have so many posts on this issue, but people keep talking about it.  In the New York Times today, Robert Putnam and Richard Reeves write "One in seven young men reports that he has no close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990."  The link goes to a report on the same 2021 survey that I wrote about before.*  In a previous post, I suggested that the apparent decline in number of close friends might reflect a difference in the survey format or the sample, and in this post I'll look at that possibility more closely.  The question about the number of close friends has been asked in two other recent surveys, one by Pew in July 2023 and another by Survey Center on American Life using the IPSOS Knowledge Panel in April 2024 (they also did the 2021 survey).  The percent reporting no close friends:

                   Men          Women

1990          4.4%           1.6% 
2021          16.4%        11.6%
2023            8.3%          7.4%

2024           17.3%       15.7%

The 2021, 2023, and 2024 surveys were conducted using online panels.  I suggested that people in online panels know that saying you had friends would increase the chance that you'd get additional questions, so that some of the "none" answers were just people who were in a hurry to get through.  The 2021 and 2024 surveys show about twice as many people reporting no friends as the 2023 survey, but that's consistent with my hypothesis--Pew and IPSOS may differ in their propensity to ask additional questions (or in how strictly they check for signs that a respondent was rushing through).  

My hypothesis implies that online panels will have more "nones," but doesn't suggest any changes in the relative frequency of other answers.  That is, if you say you have four friends rather than five, you'll still get follow-up questions.**  Here are the mean numbers of close friends for people who say they have at least one***.

                  Men          Women
1990          6.7               5.7
2021          5.0               4.5
2023          4.9               4.6
2024          5.4               5.3

So there does seem to be some decline, and it's larger for men, but the result not a growing gap, but a decline of the gap between men and women.  

These numbers don't fit the story about the social isolation of men today.  Of course, you could say there are offsetting differences--women "really" have more close friends, but also have higher standards for counting someone as a close friend.  That could be true, but you could make a similar argument about changes in the reported number of close friends--that is, people's standards might have risen over the years.  In my last post, I mentioned a question from 1950:  "When you have personal problems, do you like to discuss them with anyone to help clear them up, or not?" and said "Today, the general assumption is that it's a need, not something that you might or might not like to do."  It happens that the 2024 survey asked "If you were facing a personal problem, who is the first person you would turn to for help?" and offered some possibilities (spouse or partner, friend, parents...) , followed by "there is no one I could turn to."  The difference between those questions illustrates the nature of a change that I think has happened--growing emphasis on the ability to discuss "personal problems" as a defining feature of friendship. 

*The numbers in that report don't actually refer to young men, but to men in general.  
**You'll get fewer follow-ups if there are questions about the characteristics of individual friends, but those are unusual. 
***More than 10 is counted as 10.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, Survey Center for American Life, and Pew Research Center]

Friendship recession, part 3

 Some further notes on the evidence regarding a "friendship recession."

1.  My last post mentioned a survey from 2019 that asked about the number of "true friends."  That survey also had a question on loneliness:  "How much of the time do you feel lonely:  All of the time, most of the time, only sometimes, or hardly ever?" 3% said all the time, 5% most of the time, 23% only sometimes, and 67% hardly ever.  A 1990 Gallup survey asked "how often do you ever feel lonely,":  10% said frequently, 26% sometimes, 40% seldom, and 23% never.  A Los Angeles Times survey from 1989 asked "Everybody is lonely sometimes. Would you say that you are often lonely or seldom lonely?"  9% said often, 82% seldom, and 7% volunteered that they never felt lonely.    A NORC survey from July-August 2020 asked whether you had recently felt "very lonely or remote from other people."  32% said that they had. The same question was asked in a number of surveys from 1963 to 2001, with "yes" responses ranging from from 17% to 28%, so the 2020 figure was the highest ever.  But that was in the early stages of Covid, when there were significant restrictions on face-to-face interaction.  Considering all of those questions, I don't think that there's much evidence for a long-term rise in loneliness.  

2.  Claude Fischer had a post on changes in the reported number of friends.  In addition to the 2021 survey that I discussed in my previous post, he found a 2023 Pew survey in which similar numbers said that they had no close friends.  

3.  There were two surveys of teenagers (13-17) that asked about the number of close friends.  Unfortunately the categories used in the reports weren't identical, but they were close:

                      2018                  2024

0                       2%                   2%
1-5                  77%                 78%
6-9                  11%
6-10                                        15%
10+                    9%
more than 10                             5%

The results are very similar.  Moreover, the 2018 survey just asked about the number of close friends, while the 2024 survey included the qualifier "not counting family"--to the extent that matters, it would mean the comparison is biased towards finding a decline.  

4.    Back in 1950, the Gallup Poll asked ""When you have personal problems, do you like to discuss them with anyone to help clear them up, or not?" 64% said yes and 35% said no.  There was some sex difference between men and women, but it was not that large (69% yes among women, 62% among men).  Apart from the results, I think that it's interesting that they asked it that way.  Today, the general assumption is that it's a need, not something that you might or might not like to do.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Friendship recession, part 2

 In my last post, I noted that the evidence for a “friendship recession” came down to one survey conducted in 2021.  In that survey, the number saying that they had no friends was a lot higher than in several surveys conducted between 1976 and 2003.   But the earlier surveys were conducted by telephone using random digit dialing—ie, calling people and asking them to participate.   The 2021 survey was given to an online panel—people who agreed to participate regularly in surveys and received a small payment for doing so.  Although the panel was weighted to be representative of the population, it has one inherent difference—the respondents have more experience with surveys.   Consequently, they realize that if you say you have friends, you may get follow-up questions about those friends; if you say you don’t have any friends, you’re less likely to get follow-up questions.  Some respondents may be in a hurry, reluctant to answer more questions on the subject, or just want to get paid with minimum effort, and they will tend to say they have no friends (or only a few).   Of course, I don’t know that this makes a difference—the only way to find out is to compare it to recent surveys conducted by the traditional method.  There don’t seem to be any that ask the same question (not counting family members, how many close friends do you have), but I found one that is similar, from January 2019: “How many people would you consider to be your true friends?”

                  2019           2003

0                  5%             2%

1-2             22%          14%

3-5             35%          39%

6-10           17%          18%

10+.           19%.         27%

The report of the 2019 survey lists the categories as 6-10 and 10 or more, so it’s not clear how they counted people who said they had exactly 10; the 2003 categories are 6-9 and 10+.  Comparing 2019 to 2003, there is some increase in the numbers saying that they had none or just one or two friends.  Also, the 2019 question doesn’t add the condition of not being a family member.  So you could argue that it supports the claim of a decline in friendship.  However, it’s much smaller than the decline suggested by the 2021 survey.  Also, people may understand “true friends” and “close friends” differently:  “true friends” seems more restrictive to me.  Of course, I don’t know if I’m representative on this point, but if I am that could account for some or all of the difference.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

The Friendship Recession: men, women, both, or neither?

 For a while I had a lot of posts about the claim that there has been a decline in social connection.  I was reminded of the issue by a New York Times story which drew on a recent paper in Psychology of Men & Masculinities.  The opening sentence of that paper:  "A variety of global research reports suggest that the size and quality of men's social networks has declined disproportionately in relation to women in the last 30 years (Cox, 2021; Gallup Organisation, 1990; Figures 1 and 2)..."  The citations involve two surveys of the United States, one in 1990 and one in 2021 (the Figures 1 and 2 in the citation are based on data from those surveys), so "variety" is an exaggeration, but the difference between those surveys is dramatic.  To quote from the New York Times: "In a 2021 survey, 15 percent of men said they didn’t have any close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990."  My calculations were slightly different (maybe because of treatment of "don't knows") but also showed a dramatic increase  4.3% in 1990 and 16.4% in 2021.  However, the Times didn't mention that there was also an increase in the number of women reporting no close friends:  from 1.6% to 11.6%.  That is, it increased by a factor of seven, compared to a factor of four among men.  The mean number of reported friends for men went from 11.3 in the 1990 survey to 5.2 in 2021; among women, it went from 8.2 to 4.7.  So you could argue about whether the "friendship recession" was larger among men or women:  either way, if you go by the comparison of these surveys, it was substantial among both and limiting your attention to either men or women alone is misleading.

But is the difference between those surveys a reflection of a change in society or of differences in the surveys themselves?  I wrote about this issue a few years ago, and noted a couple of differences:  the 1990 survey was by telephone and the 2021 survey was an online panel and the 2021 question was preceded by a number of questions about whether you had done various things with friends recently, which may have pushed people towards a stricter definition of "close" friend.  I noticed another difference when I looked this time:  in 2021, the question about the number of close friends is preceded by "Now, thinking only about the friends you are close to…"  You could say that doesn't matter--they just said "close" again.  However, I wonder if some people interpreted that in geographical terms:  "close to" as "live close by," and answer the next question in terms of only those close friends living nearby.  

The Times offered another piece of evidence about the plight of men:  "in 1990, nearly half of young men said they would reach out to friends when facing a personal issue; two decades later, just over 20 percent said the same."  In this case, the questions were the same "Who do you usually talk to first when you have a personal problem?"  Among young men, there was indeed a shift away from friends and towards parents--but was this because they had fewer friends, or because they became closer to their parents?  The question asked about who you talked to first, not about whether you would talk to your friends.  

So my general conclusion is that:  (1) we don't know whether there's been a decline in friendship or social connections and (2) if there has, the evidence is that it's been similar among men and women.  There's also a more technical but still important point:  men are more likely to report having no friends than women are, but also more likely to report having large numbers of friends.  That is, the difference is not a straightforward matter of men having fewer friends.* 

Despite the public interest in this topic, there don't seem to be any other recent surveys.  The question on number of close friends was first asked in 1976 and then was asked a number of times, mostly by Gallup, until 2003.  Since then, it hasn't been repeated except in the 2021 survey (there have been some other questions about friends and/or social connections, but none have been repeated over a span of more than a few years).   

*Of course, reports of the number of friends don't tell you about the nature of those friendships, and it's possible that men and women differ in what they mean by "close friend."  But this just adds to the general point that we don't have much information. 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]