{"id":2485,"date":"2006-06-27T19:55:21","date_gmt":"2006-06-28T02:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/06\/27\/socio\/"},"modified":"2006-06-27T19:55:21","modified_gmt":"2006-06-28T02:55:21","slug":"socio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2485","title":{"rendered":"Sociologists Find Americans Are Losing Their Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new study indicates that the number of confidants Americans have has decreased over the past 20 years. This finding marks one of several studies that indicate that Americans’ social networks are decreasing. The primary proponent of this theory is political scientist, Robert Putnam,<\/a> whose book Bowling Alone,<\/em> describes the general decline in civic engagement. In this study sociologists Lynn Smith-Lovin, Miller McPherson, and Matthew Brashears were focused specifically on friends and confidants. Here is a quote from the abstract of their study:<\/p>\n

The number of people saying there is no one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled. The mean network size decreases by about a third (one confidant), from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. The modal respondent now reports having no confidant; the modal respondent in 1985 had three confidants. Both kin and non-kin confidants were lost in the past two decades, but the greater decrease of non-kin ties leads to more confidant networks centered on spouses and parents, with fewer contacts through voluntary associations and neighborhoods. Most people have densely interconnected confidants similar to them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The study also found that:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2022 The trend toward social isolation mirrors other class divides: Non-whites and people with less education tend to have smaller networks than white Americans and the highly educated.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Racial diversity among people\u2019s networks has increased. The percentage of people who count at least one person of another race in their close network has gone up from about 9 percent to more than 15 percent.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The percentage of people who talk only to family members about important matters increased from about 57 percent to about 80 percent, while the number of people who depend totally on their spouse has increased from about 5 percent to about 9 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our families and communities are undergoing some dramatic changes, as people become more and more isolated. What do you think has lead to these changes? What do you think can be done to reverse these trends (assuming you think this is negative), or is this just a product of our contemporary postmodern lives? Do you think your own experience is reflected in these trends?<\/p>\n

Here is the link to the summary of the study.<\/a> and here is a link to the authors findings.<\/a> (PDF)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study indicates that the number of confidants Americans have has decreased over the past 20 years. This finding marks one of several studies that indicate that Americans’ social networks are decreasing. The primary proponent of this theory is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-families-structures-divorce-etc","category-mind-blowing-miscellania-and-other-neat-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}