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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?
I think many reasons mentioned by others contribute, and we can quibble which is a more important contributor (screens or work), but I believe there's few mechanisms not already mentioned.
If it doesn't come to you naturally, creating and maintaining friendships is a skill or an art, in a lack of better word. Like all skills applicable in a social graph, you need enough of it in two points to keep an edge between them.
I am not very god at having friends: it is difficult for me to gauge who is interested in the discussion we are having or who is simply maintaining discussion out of politeness way past enjoyment. I have few good conversation openings, not that many ideas how/where to hang out and what to do. All of this becomes much worse because I'd like to hang out with guys who similar interests, which correlates with a similar personality type, but they/we all are similarly deficient in the relevant skills these days, and not always even cognizant of it. It's much easier and more fun to engage with a top percentile conversationalist than a median or sub-median one.
Secondarily, atomization and larger scope of interests available. If I lived in a small-to-medium sized town 40 years ago, there would not be that many options where and how and who to hang out with, I'd join the social club closest to my interests and would not know I could have different interests. Now, when I make an effort to meet people in nerdy social functions, they are interested in computer games / niche media / streaming series / CCGs / other stuff I am not interested in, and when not busy with jobs/studies/obligations (if they have any), they mostly hang out with their remote friends in Discord and doomscroll their favorite social media; I hang out with my books or scroll here. I am already too stuck in my interests and they are in theirs. I can fake an interest in listening to them but as far as I can tell, they have no interest in mine, fake or otherwise, which makes for quite one-sided "friendship".
Politics is an additional complication. Perhaps I have rosy memories, but in the '00s and until mid '10s, I think people were able to be slightly less serious and more willing to argue about their politics and then politely agree to disagree after it got bit heated. Now when someone, anyone, starts talking politics or any CW-adjacent topic, the vibe is always super tense and it is like hearing a sermon in a tent, you are supposed to nod and figuratively say "amen" when they are finished and continue with your own compatible tirade.
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