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]