42% of Americans aren't as close to their friends as they would like — and other findings from the American Friendship Project

According to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the United States is in the midst of a “loneliness epidemic.” But what does that mean about the state of American friendships?

The American Friendship Project (AFP) — an ongoing, multi-year survey — is trying to get some answers. The study reports on key facets of friendships, including quality and quantity of friends and how well people maintain their friendships.

Using data from two national samples of U.S. adults in 2022 and 2023 and from a sample of college students from three universities in 2022, the project published the first results Thursday (which is also World Friendship Day). Here’s what they found.

Americans have a handful of friends

The study concluded that Americans have four or five friends on average — which it says is similar to the number of friends reported from 1970 to 2015.

And a majority of Americans are happy with those numbers; in fact, about 75% of participants said they were satisfied with the amount of friends they have.

Nearly a quarter of friendships are casual, not close — and that’s OK!

While 55% to 60% of friends listed by participants are best or close friends, “this leaves a considerable number of ‘just’ friends,” researchers note. About 23% of friendships are considered more casual.

Natalie Pennington, co-creator of the American Friendship Project and an assistant professor of communications at Colorado State University, tells Yahoo Life that these numbers should serve as a reminder of the value of so-called weak ties.

“When we get to that question of the loneliness epidemic, communicating and interacting with people that we aren't as close to can still help us meet those goals,” she says. “It can help us feel like we have a companion and help us feel less stressed. And we can have plenty of interactions with people we aren't close with that can be beneficial as well.”

Many Americans want to have closer bonds with their friends

Some 42% of participants said they weren’t as close to their friends as they would like. And fewer than half of adults and college students alike said they were satisfied with the amount of time they had with friends.

Pennington says literal closeness could have something to do with it. “We did have about 40% of the sample who said that their friends lived somewhere else, so they weren't in the same city or state or country,” she says. “And so when you've got that physical distance, that can make it harder.”

Dr. David Spiegel, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, tells Yahoo Life that people may not feel as close to their friends because some people “are ambivalent about intimacy.”

Intimacy “has potential rewards but involves commitment, energy and vulnerability,” Spiegel says.

Chloe Carmichael, a clinical psychologist and author of Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety, tells Yahoo Life that a lot of people may also be using quick methods of communication (like pebbling) to keep in touch, which can make for connections that aren’t particularly deep.

“Simply how busy we are these days, it’s hard to just have time to get together in real life,” Carmichael says. “A lot of people are so used to keeping in touch on social media — sending a DM, commenting on a post or sending a text message — that it can almost feel intrusive for some people to pick up the phone and call.”

Some people report having no friends — but it’s not as bad as feared

The good news? Fewer people than expected are friendless, with less than 3% of Americans reporting that they have no friends.

“We expected that we'd see more people who are friendless, because there had been some recent studies that I think put it as high as 8% to 10% of Americans,” Pennington says. “We found more like 2% to 3% of Americans [are friendless], and so that was honestly really positive for us.”

Pennington says one of the reasons why the percentage of people with no friends could be higher in other studies is the subjectiveness of what qualifies as a friend. Some studies don’t allow participants to include family members or spouses as friends, which makes the friend count smaller.

“We let people include other relationships that some studies might exclude,” she says. “People are calling their romantic partners friends. They're calling their siblings friends — parents, cousins. And that's something that we think is also pretty important.”

Not many people make friends in their neighborhood — and even fewer make them online

“One surprising thing is where people meet their friends,” Pennington says. “Some of those things you might have expected to be higher than they were — like only 10% said they met in the neighborhood.”

Carmichael says our constant presence online could lead to less community engagement.

“Whereas in the past somebody would maybe go to the civic center and take a cooking class or something and start striking up friendships that way, they just might do something like that online more often now,” Carmichael says.

Still, Pennington said the percentage of people who said they met friends online was smaller than expected as well, with less than 6% of college students and adults alike saying a friendship had started online.

So where do people meet their friends? Most student friendships (65%) originated at school, and a significant number of adult friendships (about 20%) originated at work.

“But honestly, one that came up a lot was meeting through other people,” Pennington says. “It was really common to say, 'I met this friend through another friend.’”

College students and adults alike say it’s difficult to make friends

Nearly half of adults and more than half of college students believe it’s difficult to make friends, and more than half of all people surveyed (58% of adults and 65% of college students) say that it was easier to make friends “at another time of life” — which Pennington says could be referring to childhood or elementary school days.

To make fostering new friendships easier, Spiegel suggests prioritizing initiating meetups and responding to invitations to connect.

“We tend to understand that we need to work to earn a living and exercise regularly to build strength and stay healthy — but not that friendship requires regular nurturing,” he says.