Shrinking Circles of Friends
Yahoo News posted this article by Amanda Beck on how Americans now have fewer close friends than was typical in the past.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans are more socially isolated than they were 20 years ago, separated by work, commuting and the single life, researchers reported on Friday.
Nearly a quarter of people surveyed said they had "zero" close friends with whom to discuss personal matters. More than 50 percent named two or fewer confidants, most often immediate family members, the researchers said...The data also show the social isolation trend mirrors other class divides: Non-whites and people with less education tend to have smaller social networks than white Americans and the highly educated.
The division of class and close friend relationships is particularly interesting. I wonder how friendship rates are chagning by class. Is it one class group that has less friends and the others are constant or is everyone less friendly now that was previously typical?
I was not suprised to see social capital theorist Robert Putnam interved for this story. He is an advocate for building strong tie relationships, the kind that Beck informs us about and that is well documented in Putnam's book Bowling Alone.
This issue seems critical for churches, being bastions of close ties and tight friendship networks. It is also well documented that church attendance is also on the decline in the United States. Putnam asserts that these phonemena are related. The way Americans relate socially is certainly changing for good or ill, and it seems that churches should be very interested in finding out more about these changes.
Comments
I've often wondered about class/race/culture and what exactly constitutes "friendship." Often times, it seems to me, that other concepts may be used to describe similar relationships in different cultures. For example, "family" or "brothers." I think there are differences in how friendship is understood when it's used cross-culture, as well. For example, different economic circumstances have different implications for what types of friendship are most sustainable- it's difficult to sustain a friendship based on leisure activities shared (a typical middle class construction of friendhsip) when someone has to work three jobs to eat. Further, it's difficult to have the type of blood-brothers friendship based on helping each other survive when most needs are met and people are living comfortabley. I realize that class is not the same as income or even economic circumstances, but such things do shape culture.
Posted by: Jay Wilson | July 13, 2006 10:26 AM