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Aside from the dating recession, we have the equally important problem of the friendship recession. In the video Richard Reeves, gives some interesting possible hypothesis as to why friendships have been declining:
Work. I can back this anecdotally. I have made a post on here about how tough it is to find work as a young adult, in my specific industry of IT. Id probably have better chances if I were to move out of Florida, and to Austin TX or Atlanta GA. They have a larger Tech scene (& honestly, as a tech nerd, it be nice to live closer to a micro-center). I would lie if i said i haven't flirted with this idea before, but I actually have decided to remain put, precisely because I love the close friends I've made living where I'm at currently. But I won't exactly blame others for moving around for monetary reasons - we all need cash and it sucks ass to be broke.
He mentions parents & the amount of time now spent on raising children. This is HUGE in my opinion and needs to be talked about more: the fact that we can no longer free range raise our children as was done in the past is a great sorrow. It SUCKS to be constantly helicoptered and hand held as a child. I dont think I can emphasize that enough. It also doesnt need to be done, especially when children in other countries have much more independence, and are happier and healthier as a result.
Break ups splintering friendship groups. If couples break up, it can screw with the friend group as a whole, especially if someone is crazy toxic or commits infidelity. I've seen this happen in friend groups first hand. Its not pretty.
The obvious elephant in the room here is the rise of social media. Where people mindlessly scroll instead of talking to people in real life. While i think this plays a role, sociologists have been recording these kind of declines since the invention of TV. I suspect something deeper going on. What do you think?
Personally I've experienced the opposite. It's easy to make friends, stay in touch with them, and find activities to do with them.
I'm a parent of 3 and I only work part time remotely, so at least two of the factors listed apply to me.
I'm friends with a bunch of the neighborhood dads. We will have get togethers during the nice weather where the kids all just run around someone's house and backyard.
I've made some friends on TheMotte who are fun to talk with and play video games with.
I've made some friends on some of the games I play online.
I still have many friends from my time in college, I will have a few hour long phone chats with one of them. Another I get lunch with every other month. A few others I see regularly at underwater hockey. I'll have all the underwater hockey players over to my place for a get together on occasion.
My wife and I have about 15 cousins each, some of them live close enough to hangout but they are also in the process of getting married so we have averaged about two weddings a year while married.
I'm going to see Hail Mary with a friend and former roommate when it comes out. When I texted him I realized we hadn't texted or hung out in over a year. I haven't been avoiding him or anything I'm just literally too busy to hangout with all the friends I have.
I like having friends though. I enjoy hanging out with people and having deep or interesting or just funny conversations. My mother is a major contrast with me. She has a few friends that she might speak with a few times in a decade. One couple that might be considered friends with her and my dad, but that couple puts in all or most of the effort to get together. And otherwise she just has her adult children (3, including me) that she hangs out with. She doesn't like having lots of friends. She easily gets a form of social anxiety that makes her dread going out.
With everyone I know this is the same general pattern. They either have a 100-200 friends they can't possibly hangout with, but they try anyways. Or they have like 1-5 friends that they are barely trying to maintain. Both groups of people seem to be getting exactly what they want.
I think the main limiting factor on modern friendship is how many friends someone wants to have. And thus I don't think it's much of a problem at all.
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