Friendship and loneliness statistics 2026: sourced and dated

As of October 2026, about 1 in 5 US adults (roughly 20%) say they felt lonely a lot of the previous day, according to Gallup’s latest update (April 2026), and the World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 6 people worldwide are affected by loneliness. Time with others is shrinking: Americans spent 35 minutes a day socializing and communicating in 2025, down from 41 minutes in 2015. On friendship itself, the most recent US figure is Pew’s: 18% of adults said in 2024 that they had no close friends outside their family.

Every number below links to its primary source and shows when the data were collected, when they were published, and a freshness label. We’ve also included the questions the data can’t answer and the popular figures that are older than they look. We checked every source on 20 October 2026.

How to read the freshness labels

Each statistic carries one of three labels, based on its publication date relative to October 2026:

• Fresh: published in the last 12 months.
• Recent: published 12 to 24 months ago. Still a reasonable current figure.
• Old: published more than two years ago. Fine as background or history, but look for something newer before using it as “the current number”.

Survey data are usually collected months before they’re published, so we list both dates where the source gives them.

The key numbers at a glance

Statistic	Where	Data collected	Source and publication date	Freshness
Around 20% of adults felt lonely a lot of the previous day, “leveling off” after rising from 17–18%	US	2024–2026	Gallup, April 2026	Fresh
35 minutes a day spent socializing and communicating (41 in 2015); 30% did any on an average day (38% in 2015)	US	2025	Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2026	Fresh
40% talk with neighbors at least a few times a week (59% in 2012)	US	October 2025	Survey Center on American Life, April 2026	Fresh
21% lonely a lot of the previous day; 29% of 18–29-year-olds; 15% of over-65s	US	May–June 2025	Gallup, September 2025	Recent
1 in 6 people affected by loneliness; about 871,000 deaths a year linked to it	World	Various	WHO Commission on Social Connection, June 2025	Recent
6% felt lonely most or all of the time in the past four weeks; 8% have no close friends	23 OECD countries; 22 European OECD countries	Various years	OECD, October 2025	Recent
16% feel lonely or isolated all or most of the time	US	September 2024	Pew Research Center, January 2025	Recent
18% have no close friends outside family; 81% have at least one	US	September 2024	Pew Research Center, January 2025	Recent
25% of men aged 15–34 lonely a lot of the previous day, vs 18% of all adults	US	2023–2024	Gallup, May 2025	Recent
8% have no close friends outside family; 53% have one to four; 38% five or more	US	July 2023	Pew Research Center, October 2023	Old
12% have no close friends, vs 3% in 1990	US	May 2021	Survey Center on American Life, June 2021	Old
Lacking social connection carries a premature-death risk comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day	US review of studies	Before 2023	US Surgeon General, May 2023	Old

Loneliness in the US: why figures range from 16% to “about half”

US loneliness figures differ mainly because surveys ask different questions. Daily or frequent loneliness sits around 16% to 21%; experiencing loneliness at all is far more common.

What the survey asked	Figure	Source	Freshness
Felt loneliness “a lot of the day yesterday”	About 20% (2026); 21% (May–June 2025, n=5,426); 20% (August–September 2024, n=6,289)	Gallup, April 2026; Gallup, September 2025; Gallup, October 2024	Fresh / Recent / Old
Feel lonely or isolated “all or most of the time”	16%; 22% of under-50s vs 9% of over-50s	Pew Research Center, January 2025	Recent
Lonely, on Harvard’s measure	21%	Harvard Making Caring Common, October 2024 (survey May 2024)	Old
Report experiencing loneliness (any)	“Approximately half” of US adults	US Surgeon General’s advisory, as published in May 2023, citing earlier surveys	Old

The Gallup series is the best for trends because it asks the same question repeatedly. It peaked at 25% in three readings during the pandemic (the last in March 2021), fell to 17–18% through much of 2022 to 2024, rose to 21% in mid-2025, and Gallup describes it as leveling off around 20% in 2026. In the September 2025 release, young adults aged 18 to 29 were the loneliest group (29%) and adults over 65 the least lonely (15%).

In Pew’s survey, 38% said they feel lonely sometimes and 47% hardly ever or never; among adults 65 and older, two-thirds said hardly ever or never.

Loneliness around the world

Worldwide, between about 6% and 24% of people report loneliness depending on the measure, with young people and low-income countries hardest hit.

• 1 in 6 people are affected by loneliness, and it is linked to an estimated 871,000 deaths a year, about 100 an hour. Loneliness affects 17% to 21% of people aged 13 to 29, and about 24% of people in low-income countries against about 11% in high-income countries. (WHO Commission on Social Connection, June 2025, Recent)
• 6% of people in 23 OECD countries felt lonely most or all of the time over the previous four weeks. People aged 16 to 24 saw the largest rise in loneliness between 2018 and 2022, and men saw larger deteriorations than women in both loneliness and relationship quality. (OECD, Social Connections and Loneliness in OECD Countries, as published on 16 October 2025, Recent)
• 25% of US men aged 15 to 34 felt lonely a lot of the previous day, against a 15% median for young men across OECD countries and 18% for US adults overall. (Gallup, May 2025, using 2023–2024 data, Recent)
• 24% of people aged 15 and older in 142 countries and areas felt very or fairly lonely, including 27% of 19- to 29-year-olds and 17% of over-65s. (Meta-Gallup, October 2023, fielded June 2022 to February 2023, Old)

How many close friends do people have?

Most US adults have between one and four close friends. The share with none is somewhere between 8% and 18%, depending on how the question is asked.

Figure	Source	Data collected	Freshness
81% have at least one close friend not counting family; 64% have more than one; 18% have none	Pew Research Center, January 2025	September 2024	Recent
8% have no close friends in 22 European OECD countries	OECD, October 2025	Various years	Recent
8% have no close friends; 53% one to four; 38% five or more. Five or more: 49% of over-65s vs 32% of under-30s	Pew Research Center, October 2023	July 2023 (n=5,057)	Old
12% have no close friends (3% in 1990); 49% have three or fewer (27% in 1990); 13% have ten or more (33% in 1990)	Survey Center on American Life, June 2021	May 2021 (n=2,019)	Old

Two cautions. Both Pew surveys excluded family, but they asked differently: in 2023, “Not counting your family, how many close friends do you have?”; in 2024, “Not counting your family, do you have any close friends?” (Pew’s 2023 and 2024 questionnaires). So the jump from 8% to 18% isn’t a measured trend. And the Survey Center’s 1990 comparison uses a Gallup telephone survey, while the 2021 survey was online; the report notes the change of method may affect comparability.

Friendship also matters to people more than most other life goals: in Pew’s 2023 survey, 61% said having close friends is extremely or very important for a fulfilling life, compared with 23% for being married, 26% for having children and 24% for having a lot of money.

For how these numbers relate to the “5, 15, 50, 150” layers of personal networks, see Dunbar’s number and your friendship circles.

How much time do people spend with friends?

Less than they used to. Time-use data, which records what people actually did rather than how they feel, shows a long decline in social time.

• 35 minutes a day socializing and communicating in 2025, down from 41 minutes in 2015. Only 30% of people did any on an average day, down from 38%. Time spent playing games or using a computer for leisure rose from 25 to 37 minutes. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey, released June 2026, Fresh)
• From 60 to 20 minutes a day with friends in person between 2003 and 2020 (it was 34 minutes in 2019, before the pandemic). For 15- to 24-year-olds, the fall was from about 150 to 40 minutes a day. Time spent alone rose from 285 to 333 minutes a day. (Kannan and Veazie, SSM Population Health, 2023, analysing American Time Use Survey data for 2003–2020; the figures for 15- to 24-year-olds come from the Surgeon General’s 2023 summary of the study, Old)
• Face-to-face contact fell, remote contact rose. In 21 European OECD countries, daily in-person contact with friends and family fell steadily across 2006, 2015 and 2022, while remote contact increased. (OECD, October 2025, Recent)
• Neighbors and local places. 40% of Americans talk with neighbors at least a few times a week, down from 59% in 2012 (Survey Center, April 2026, Fresh). 54% regularly spend time at a local coffee shop, bar, restaurant or park, against 67% before the pandemic (Survey Center, July 2025, Recent).

How do people keep in touch with close friends?

Mostly by text. Pew’s survey of US adults with close friends (collected September 2024, published January 2025, Recent) found:

How they connect at least a few times a week	Share
Any method	74%
Texting	61%
Social media	39%
Phone or video call	35% (women 38%, men 32%)
In person	29% (men 31%, women 28%)

Distance is part of the reason. Among Americans with close friends, only 36% say a lot or all of them live nearby; 32% say some do, 19% only a few, and 12% say none live close (Survey Center, July 2025, Recent). Our guide to long-distance friendships covers what to do about that.

Technology gets much of the blame, and people are wary of AI’s role:

• 73% of US adults named technology as a contributor to loneliness, the most-cited cause in Harvard’s 2024 survey (Old).
• 50% of US adults say AI will make people worse at forming meaningful relationships, and only 5% say better; among under-30s, 58% say worse (Pew Research Center, survey June 2025, published September 2025, Recent).
• 76% of US adults actively connect with friends, but only 14% use AI to stay in touch, according to a survey the venture firm Menlo Ventures ran with Morning Consult (April 2025, n=5,031, Recent).

Friendship, loneliness and health

Loneliness and isolation are consistently linked to worse physical and mental health, though most of the evidence shows association rather than proof of cause.

• Premature death: the US Surgeon General’s advisory (as published in 2023) reports that loneliness and social isolation raise the risk of premature death by 26% and 29% respectively, and that lacking social connection can raise that risk as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Poor social relationships were associated with a 29% higher risk of heart disease and a 32% higher risk of stroke. (Old; the advisory summarizes earlier studies.)
• Depression: lonely people are twice as likely to become depressed (WHO, 2025, Recent). Gallup found a 33% depression rate among US adults who felt lonely the day before the survey, against 13% among those who didn’t (April 2026, Fresh).
• Life satisfaction: 56% of Americans with at least six close friends are very or completely satisfied with their lives, against 37% of those with one or two and 28% of those with none (Survey Center, July 2025, Recent).
• Daily wellbeing: in a study of more than 900 people on five campuses, one quality conversation with a friend (catching up, joking around, showing care and so on) reduced stress and increased connection by the end of the day (University of Kansas, 2023, Old).

Men, women and friendship

Men and women report similar overall loneliness in the US, but men rely less on friends for emotional support, and young men stand out as unusually lonely.

• In the past week, 48% of women and 30% of men had shared personal feelings with a friend; 41% of women and 21% of men had received emotional support from one (Survey Center, 2021, Old).
• 54% of women and 38% of men say they’d be extremely or very likely to turn to a friend for emotional support (Pew, January 2025, Recent).
• US men aged 15 to 34 are 67% more likely than their OECD peers to feel lonely on a given day (25% vs 15%); young US women are 13% more likely than theirs (18% vs 16%) (Gallup, April 2026, Fresh, drawing on 2023–2024 data).
• Men and women are about equally likely to have at least one close friend outside family (Pew, January 2025, Recent); in Pew’s 2023 survey, 40% of men and 36% of women had five or more (Old).

What the data can’t tell us

Some of the questions people most want answered have no reliable data yet. Here’s what’s missing:

• A clean long-term trend in close friendships. The best-known comparison (3% with no close friends in 1990 vs 12% in 2021) mixes a telephone survey with an online one, and Pew’s two recent figures (8% and 18%) come from differently worded questions. No source we found asks the same friendship question the same way across decades.
• Comparable loneliness rates. “A lot of the day yesterday”, “all or most of the time” and “ever” measure different things. Comparing a figure from one survey with another’s misleads.
• Cause and effect. Most health findings come from observational studies. They show strong links between disconnection and illness, but loneliness can be both a cause and a consequence of poor health.
• Most of the world. The richest trend data come from the US and Europe. Global estimates exist, but detailed, repeated measurement is rare elsewhere.
• How friendships end. Robin Dunbar’s network research (2020) suggests that, while broken family ties tend to fracture suddenly, most friendships die quietly as a result of reduced contact, but we found no population-level figure for how many friendships people lose to drift each year.
• Texting norms. We found no authoritative data on how quickly friends expect replies, how often people expect to hear from close friends, or how many messages go unanswered.

Popular figures that are older than they look

If you’re citing friendship statistics, these are the ones most often presented as current when they aren’t:

• “12% of Americans have no close friends.” Collected in May 2021, during the pandemic. Newer Pew surveys, which both exclude family but word the question differently, put the figure at 8% (2023) or 18% (2024).
• “Half of Americans are lonely.” From the 2023 Surgeon General’s advisory, citing earlier surveys that measured any experience of loneliness. Frequent loneliness is closer to one in five.
• “Time with friends fell from an hour a day to 20 minutes.” True for 2003 to 2020, but 2020 was a lockdown year; the 2019 figure was 34 minutes.
• “A quarter of the world is lonely.” Meta-Gallup’s 24% was collected in 2022 and early 2023.
• “Loneliness is as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” The advisory’s wording is narrower: lacking social connection can increase the risk of premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

What to do with these numbers

The statistics describe a slow squeeze on social time rather than a sudden collapse, and the research on what helps is encouraging: small, regular contact keeps friendships alive, and a single good conversation measurably improves a day. If you’re reading this because your own friendships feel thinner than you’d like, our practical guide on how to keep in touch with friends as an adult turns the research into a weekly routine, and how often should you text your friends gives rhythms by closeness. If most of your friendships live in iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram or Instagram, Tera Chat (our Mac app) can flag the chats that are fading before they go cold.

We’ll update this page as new data are published. Last checked: 20 October 2026.