63. End the "friendship famine"!

Most of us think of loneliness as a personal problem. It’s not. It’s a social problem. There’s a decline in friendships around the country … you could call it a friendship famine.

Data point of the week
Findings from the American Perspectives Survey show that the number of close friendships Americans have has decreased dramatically over the past three decades. Between 1990 and 2021, the number of people who have no close friends outside of family members has quadrupled, while the number of people with five or more close friends has dropped by almost half.

Reflection
As humans, we like things to make sense. So, when we experience a problem—like loneliness—we develop an explanation to make sense of it. But HOW we explain things matters a lot. Our explanation dictates how we feel about the problem, and what we do about it.

What would you say if I asked you right now, “When you’re lonely, what do you see as the cause of your loneliness?”

Seriously, pause for a minute to answer this…

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Have you answered yet?

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A lot of the people I work with explain their loneliness in these ways (and I have too 🙋‍♀️):

• “It’s hard for me to make friends because I have social anxiety (am an introvert/don’t know what to say…).”

• “I don’t reach out because I’m afraid of rejection (of being a burden/that they’re not interested...)”

• “I don’t fit in. Nobody gets me. I’m too_________. Or not ________ enough.”

These explanations place the responsibility for the problem within the individual. They make us feel like we’re lonely because there’s something wrong with us. And that really doesn’t help matters.

If you’re lonely, YOU are not the problem. You’re reacting to your environment. I like the language “friendship famine” because a famine that’s sweeping the nation/globe obviously isn’t your fault.  

You may be familiar with the concept of “food deserts,” which describes people who live in areas that don’t have access to nutritious food. There are no grocery stores or farmer’s markets. People are forced to live on low quality junk food.

A parallel can be drawn with connection. Many of us live—and work—in “connection deserts,” with limited access to meaningful interactions and relationships. This might look like having very few connections (isolation), or we might have lots of interactions, but they’re mostly quick and superficial … the social equivalent of cotton candy. Either way, we’re not getting the social nutrition we need.

If our social nutrition looks like this, we’ll be left feeling unsatisfied, craving something more substantial.

Access to high quality nutritious food is essential to health. So is access to high quality interactions and relationships. Connection = psychological nutrition! You can’t survive, let alone thrive, on junk alone. Unless you’re a trained survivalist, living in a desert will cause suffering.

Connection Skill & Action Step: Improve your social nutrition
Take a few minutes to reflect on your social environment. Are you living in a connection desert, or a more abundant landscape? Do you have relationships that feed and sustain you, or are you left feeling empty?

If you’re satisfied with your social nutrition, congratulations! You’ve found or created an oasis.

If you’re in a connection desert, here are a couple things you can do:

• Dig a well. Identify a relationship you’d like to deepen. Generally speaking, we get more social nourishment from longer, face-to-face interactions that feel meaningful. To make your interactions more meaningful, and get closer to someone, try following the “friendship formula”(sharing, caring, and when necessary repairing).

• Find an oasis. Not all social opportunities are created equal. Some facilitate connection, and others don’t. If you want to get involved in something that will help you make friends, ask if it meets most—or all—of the 6 conditions for creating connection. Is it: Safe, Small, Structured, Sustained over time, and does it include opportunities for Self-disclosure and discovering Shared interests or identities? These 6 Ss create the conditions for connection. You can download how to use them to create student connection here, or employee connection here.

• Create an oasis. Become a ProjectConnect facilitator and lead groups that help participants build relationships!
  

Questions (Please share your responses in the comments):
Does the concept of a “friendship famine” or “connection desert” resonate with you?
Does this shift in language change how you think or feel about loneliness?

Want to create an oasis of connection?

Become a certified ProjectConnect Facilitator!

What kind of social nutrition is available to you?