Social Isolation

What do the data show?

About one in 10 Americans say they do not have friends or family members they can count on. The US ranks just below Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Ireland. As with the satisfaction measure above, Finland ranks first. Like the decline in current life satisfaction above, this also seems to have taken a turn for the worse in the mid-2000s. Other evidence reinforces that Americans have fewer close friends and family members than in the past and that people are spending less time with friends in person.

What might explain these patterns?

As with current life satisfaction, we see a sharp turn for the worse around 2007. The separation of people from their jobs and neighbors in the wake of the Great Recession is one possible explanation. Also, the introduction of smartphones at about the same time may have increased social isolation because these devices take our time and attention away from in-person interaction with other people.

Unlike current life satisfaction, however, this was not the start of a persistent decline in social isolation. It is unclear why social isolation largely stabilized (with some seemingly random fluctuations from year to year) and current life satisfaction continued to decline.

Perhaps surprisingly, COVID did not immediately produce negative effects on social isolation. In fact, social isolation actually diminished in the early months of the pandemic, perhaps because many Americans spent more time at home with family members and roommates, or because people banded together to help each other get through the crisis. Social isolation spiked back up in later years to an all-time high.

Still, the trends in current life satisfaction and social isolation may be partially intertwined: people may be less satisfied with their current lives because they are more socially isolated, and they are more isolated because they have a more negative outlook that pushes them away from friends and family. The increased pressure we place on ourselves to excel in life could explain both patterns: raising expectations about some areas of our lives and leading us to put less effort into our relationships.