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Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, discusses the importance of friendships and the potential âfriendship recession.â He notes that loneliness can be as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes per day, but measuring and quantifying friendships is difficult. According to Reeves, an ideal number of close friends is around three or four.
But alarmingly, 15% of young men today report having no close friends, compared to 3% in the 1990s. The COVID pandemic has further tested friendship networks, with women being the most affected due to their friendships' reliance on physical contact. Other factors likely have contributed to the decline in friendships in the 21st-century U.S., including geographical mobility, parenting demands, workism, and relationship breakdowns.
Reeves emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and nurturing friendships as they don't form spontaneously. Admitting the desire for friends requires vulnerability and openness, which may be difficult for some individuals.
0:00 A friendship recession
1:20 4 friendship formations
1:54 How many friends do people need?
2:21 The ideal relationship
3:03 Why are we losing friends?
4:20 Friendship & your health
5:07 Male friendships
5:43 Female friendships
6:27 The dystopia we must avoid
7:20 The hardest thing to admit
Read the video transcript âș bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/frienâŠ
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About Richard Reeves:
Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he directs the Future of the Middle Class Initiative and co-directs the Center on Children and Families. His Brookings research focuses on the middle class, inequality and social mobility.
Richard writes for a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, National Affairs, The Atlantic, Democracy Journal, and Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Dream Hoarders (Brookings Institution Press, 2017), and John Stuart Mill â Victorian Firebrand (Atlantic Books, 2007), an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician.
Dream Hoarders was named a Book of the Year by The Economist, a Political Book of the Year by The Observer, and was shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice. In September 2017, Politico magazine named Richard one of the top 50 thinkers in the U.S. for his work on class and inequality.
A Brit-American, Richard was director of strategy to the UKâs Deputy Prime Minister from 2010 to 2012. Other previous roles include director of Demos, the London-based political think-tank; social affairs editor of the Observer; principal policy advisor to the Minister for Welfare Reform, and research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Richard is also a former European Business Speaker of the Year and has a BA from Oxford University and a PhD from Warwick University.
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Views : 3,663,166
Genre: Education
Date of upload: Mar 31, 2023 ^^
Rating : 4.943 (1,569/107,891 LTDR)
RYD date created : 2024-05-16T06:03:50.293804Z
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YouTube Comments - 8,015 Comments
Top Comments of this video!! :3
Itâs not a decline in friendship, itâs the monetization of our friendships. You can meet at restaurants and cafes, you can rent tennis courts, pay green fees, pay gym fees, etc Itâs actually hard to get together without spending money. Our culture has made everything transactional.
22K |
A mentor of mine, who was a psychologist for over 50-years once said to me, "If you have one true friend, you are luckier than most people."
10K |
A few years ago one of my oldest friends lost his job after coming down with heart failure. He spent a long, painful time recovering, and during all that time almost all of his other "friends" stopped contacting him or answering his calls. I was one of the only friends of his who tried to support him through that time. Honestly it seems as if most people nowadays just like friendship as a concept, but retreat anytime the need to act like a real friend shows up.
2.5K |
Weâre seriously living in an awful dystopia. So many people are broke from living paycheck to paycheck in survival mode because theyâre not paid adequate wages, are friendless, and canât find a meaningful romantic relationship or even a date.
Part of this is the rise in narcissism and transactional nature of society. A lot of people are also paralyzed from trauma, which stunts their ability to interact and relate.
It doesnât feel like much is being done about these issues.
1.4K |
Isnât it amazing how âsocialâ media, instead of connecting us, has become a barrier to real life and real relationships?
4.8K |
This is because we romanticize romantic love as the highest form of relationship.
Like, you cannot act intimately with someone, such as supporting each other, hugging each other, just being together always, without people thinking that you are somewhat involved romantically.
And then, when one friend gets a romantic partner, they tend to forgo their other relationships, and outcast people who aren't partnered.
2.3K |
It's hard to maintain friendships over text messaging, for people of all ages. It's also hard to get people to commit to getting together in real life. People are too tired, they cancel, they leave you on read. It's very disheartening. When I was young we put in the effort to call, to meet up, to listen, not only 1:1 but also in groups. What a sad place we are at.
660 |
I went to dinner with a group of âfriendsâ recently. Expecting a fun evening with good conversation I was subjected to five people scrolling through their phones complaining about peopleâs posts. On my way home I realized I would have had a more fulfilling night staying in watching CSI re runs.
329 |
Also, friendship has been treated as a second class relationship. Look at all our books, movies, tv shows, etc. It's all one big push for romantic relationships, in whatever form they may be. You hardly ever see a solid friendship put forward as important or needed. If you have people who are friends there is always a push to make them a romantic couple.
1.9K |
I have a good friend from Northern Iraq, Kurdistan. He told me his grandfather has met up with his best friend for tea and conversation every single day for almost his entire life. When my friend moved to Canada, he was struck by how intensely lonely and solitary our culture is. Interesting that this video didn't get into the cultural differences on this topic.
5.4K |
One thing Iâve noticed as an adult is that many friendships fall apart when one of them starts dating / gets married. Their world revolves around their partner now, so they have a lot less time for you and youâll be alone. Itâs hard to become friends with a mother / wife because their entire world is their children and marriage. They donât care or have time for friendships.
316 |
I think one overlooked reason in the decrease of friendships might also be the current car-centric urban planning, which inevitably makes meeting people more difficult/more of a hassle, since working 8h+ a day plus a couple hours commute leaves little time and energy to make plans with acquaintances. Implementing dense urban areas which are centered around the people would create friendships just by the nature of its design.
2.1K |
To utter "I need a friend" is very hard because it implies that the person is not loveable. What a life to live in.
3.1K |
One important ingredient you need to develop good and meaningful friendships is time. In today's world, I feel like our available hours in each day to foster friendships have diminished significantly. We work two jobs, we spend hours in traffic, we put in overtime at work, we have aging parents to care for who are living longer, etc. Then, with the free time we do have, we have to prioritize with family, spouses, kids, pets, etc. Everyone says âyou have to make the timeâ but a pie can only be cut so many times.
2.3K |
I lost myself in my last relationship and lost all my friends during this period. I've now realized a bit too late that a real friend is worth so much more than a lover.
57 |
I used to be a wildly social extrovert with a massive friend group throughout all my school years and 20s. There wasn't a person I wouldn't chat up and make friends with. Heading into my 30s, many friends started moving away or having kids (which I have not). Add to that the pandemic which further drove everyone apart and feels like the ultimate nail in the friendship coffin.
Fortunately I still keep in touch with a handful of old friends, but it's a lot more surface-level (sending each other occasional memes/articles/videos, but nothing in the way of deep conversation like we used to have). Now that I'm nearly 40, it's quite hard to make new friends, and I've grown increasingly introverted. Not in the least bit shy, thoughâ big distinction there. I can still chat up total strangers with ease and confidence. It's just that I don't really care to anymore. And when I do, it feels brief and superficial, and I almost always would rather be at home doing my own thing, working on personal projects or almost anything else. The idea of going to lots of parties and meeting new people used to thrill me a decade ago, but now that sounds boring, exhausting, and totally draining.
But at the same time, I enjoy my time alone. I never would've thought as an extrovert growing up that I could become a total introvert. I think in many ways I kind of burned myself out from the first few decades of non-stop socializing, and have finally found myself in all of it â and turns out I actually enjoy just doing my own thing. I do love seeing old friends, though, it's just not the way it used to be.
951 |
I very rarely felt equality in friendships. Often I felt like I was only there to sit and listen. I learned the hard way when my dad died and all my friends ditched me, even though I apologized to them for not spending as much time with them as before. They still ditched me. It's difficult to still hold hope for genuine friendships after that experience.
3.7K |
I'm 27 and I'm pretty much friendless. I stopped being friends with my friends when I realized they didn't care about me, they wouldn't help me like I helped them when they need someone. I get lonely all the time but as I get older I just sort of accept that this is my life and it's okay to not have anyone, though deep down I know how wrong I am. Everybody needs a shoulder to lean on.
3.1K |
Iâm damn near ready for life to just end. Everything feels so pointless and empty. Weâve become too smart for our own good while simultaneously being too dumb to stop being unkind to each other.
18 |
@bigthink
1 year ago
What do you think is the cause of the decline in friendships? How do you think we can address it (if we should)?
1.2K |