Americans with no close friends went from 3% to 12% in thirty years

What it doesn’t show

Two surveys thirty years apart, run by different organisations with different instruments — some of the gap could be method rather than change. "Close friend" is self-defined and the meaning of the term may itself have shifted. And this is one country; do not read it as a description of anywhere else.

What Kept does about it

Context, not a mechanism. It says the problem is real and growing; it does not say anything about what fixes it, and we do not use it to imply that Kept does.

Read the source

Cox (2021) — The State of American Friendship, Survey Center on American Life ↗

Confidence: B — a single strong peer-reviewed study, or a consistent multi-study literature. We don’t publish anything weaker than this.

Half a personal network turns over every seven years
Seven years on, only 48% of the people in someone’s personal network were still in it. For the closest roles — the people you discuss important matters with, the people who help you out — only around 30% still held the same position.
Across 141 studies, how you use social media barely predicts wellbeing
Most associations were negligible, below r = .10. The exceptions were between-person: active use correlated with greater online support (r = .34), wellbeing (r = .15), positive affect (r = .11) and also anxiety symptoms (r = .12). Passive use looked worse in general feed contexts but not inside social-media groups.
Brief exchanges with people you barely know lift the day
People were happier and felt greater belonging on days with more weak-tie interactions. A brief genuine exchange with a barista produced more positive affect than an efficient one, and the effect was mediated by belonging.

Kept is what we built from this.

A private voice journal for the people closest to you. Nine seconds of talking after you see someone, and the detail comes back before it matters.

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Americans with no close friends went from 3% to 12% in thirty years

How it was done

What it means

What it doesn’t show

What Kept does about it

Related

Half a personal network turns over every seven years

Across 141 studies, how you use social media barely predicts wellbeing

Brief exchanges with people you barely know lift the day

Kept is what we built from this.