The Friendship Recession Is Real, and It's Not Your Fault

You have 400 followers and no one to text when you have a bad day. That friend from three jobs ago is still sitting in your "meant to text her back" pile, eighteen months later. If any of that sounds familiar, you're not broken, and you're definitely not alone (even if it feels that way). You're living through what researchers are now calling the friendship recession, and it's hitting women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s especially hard.

📝 In this article:

What is the friendship recession?

The friendship recession is the slow, steady decline in close friendships among adults over the last few decades, and it's not just a vibe. It's backed by actual data.

Back in 1990, the average American had about three close friends. By 2021, that number had dropped to just over two. In 1990, only 3% of people said they had zero close friends. Today, some surveys put that number at 12%, and others as high as 17%. Best friendships have taken a hit too: 75% of people had a best friend in 1990, compared to 59% now. [1,2]

It gets more specific when you zoom in on how people spend their time. For decades, Americans spent around 6.5 hours a week with friends. Between 2014 and 2019, that dropped to 4 hours. Then between 2014 and 2023, time spent with friends fell by 37% overall. And it's not evenly distributed: research from the Survey Center on American Life shows the drop has been especially steep for men, but younger women aren't escaping it either. Gen Z reports the highest rates of loneliness of any generation, with some surveys showing 65–80% of Gen Z respondents felt lonely in the past year, compared to less than half of Baby Boomers. [2,3]

Basically: this is a documented, generation-wide shift with an actual name, not a personal failing at friendship. It's happening to millions of people at once.

Why are friendships declining?

There's no single villain here. It's more like a bunch of small cultural shifts that piled up and subtly wrecked the conditions friendship needs to grow. Here's what's actually going on.

We move more and put down fewer roots

Careers and rising rent have pushed people to move cities, or even just neighborhoods, more often than previous generations did. Remote work has only made relocating easier. Every move means starting your social life from zero, and rebuilding a friend group in your 30s hits different than it did during your dorm-room era. [4]

Third places are disappearing

Sociologists call them "third places": the spots that aren't home or work where people just exist together. Think diners, community centers, churches, bowling alleys, the mall food court you basically lived at as a teenager. Even Blockbusters (an ancient relic of times past).

A lot of these spaces have shut down or gotten more expensive over the decades. Without a low-effort place to casually run into people, spontaneous friendship just doesn't happen as often. You have to plan it, and planning is exhausting. [5]

Work ate our free time (and our energy)

Work hours have crept longer, and remote work rarely clocks out anymore. Throw a side hustle into the mix, and there's even less unclaimed time in the average week than there used to be. And the time that is left often goes to recovery, not connection. Making a new friend takes energy most of us are spending on staying afloat. [6,7]

Social media replaced hangouts, but didn't replace connection

Here's the cruel irony: we're more "connected" than any generation in history, and lonelier than most. Scrolling can feel like socializing, but liking someone's Story isn't the same as sitting across from them. Social media gives your brain just enough of a connection hit that you don't feel the urgency to make plans in real life, even though the loneliness is still there underneath.

The pandemic hit fast-forward on all of it

The friendship recession was already happening before 2020, but the pandemic sped it up dramatically. Years of canceled plans took a toll, and remote work becoming normal didn't make things easier. Most people also got out of practice at socializing, and friend groups ended up thinner than they were before the pandemic. And a lot of us never fully rebuilt. [8]

Nobody wants to be "too much"

There's also a more emotional reason: a lot of adults are scared of being rejected, or scared of seeming needy. Reaching out first feels vulnerable, and suggesting plans only to get left on read feels worse. Here's the thing though: psychologists call this the "liking gap," and it means most of us have it backwards. In a 2018 study tracking over 1,300 real conversations, people were only actually rejected about 13% of the time. The odds are much better than they feel. Still, a lot of people stop trying anyway, and convince themselves they're "too busy" instead of admitting they're scared of being turned down. [9]

🔎 Dig deeper: Socially Awkward? Here’s How to Make Friends Without Cringe

## The friendship recession hits different for women

All of the causes above apply to everyone. But if you're trying to conceive, pregnant, in the thick of early motherhood, or going through menopause, the friendship recession tends to hit faster and harder, because your entire social world can shift overnight, whether you're ready for it or not.

Trying to conceive can be isolating

When you're TTC, friendship dynamics can get complicated fast, especially if it's taking longer than you hoped. A friend's pregnancy announcement that should feel exciting can also feel like a gut punch. Conversations start revolving around nurseries and due dates while you're privately tracking follicle counts and two-week waits.

Your friends haven't done anything wrong here, and feeling a complicated mix of happy-for-them and sad-for-you doesn't make you a bad person either. The day-to-day experience gap just gets wide enough that hanging out starts to feel like work. A lot of women describe slowly drifting from friends who "just" got pregnant, simply because sitting across from a reminder of what you're still waiting for is genuinely hard. Resentment usually has nothing to do with it.

👉 Read more: Overcoming Loneliness During Our TTC Journey

Pregnancy changes your priorities before it changes your body

Even a wanted, exciting pregnancy can shift your friendships. Suddenly you're wiped out by 8pm and skipping the wine at brunch. Some days, you're too nauseated to make plans at all. Friends without kids don't always know how to adjust, and you might not know how to ask them to. Meanwhile, your headspace is filling up with appointments and symptoms, on top of a genuinely massive identity shift (hi, matrescence) that your pre-baby friend group may not fully relate to yet.

It's common to feel like you're floating between two worlds: not quite fitting with your childfree friends anymore, and not yet plugged into a "mom" community either.

🤰 Get the full story: How to Navigate Pregnancy Loneliness

New motherhood is one of the loneliest transitions there is

This is where the data gets stark. Surveys of new parents put loneliness rates anywhere from 32% to as high as 100%. Research also links postpartum loneliness directly to higher rates of postpartum mental health struggles, with close to half of lonely new moms also reporting mental health difficulties in the months after birth. [10,11]

The reasons line up with everything else in the friendship recession, just turned up to eleven. Your schedule is dictated by feeds and naps, not happy hour. Maternity leave (if you get any) can mean weeks or months without your usual work friendships. The friends who don't have kids yet genuinely can't relate to your new day-to-day, through no fault of their own. And the friends who do have kids are often just as exhausted and stretched thin as you are, making it hard for anyone to be the one who reaches out first.

👩‍🍼 You matter, mama: Lonely in Motherhood? Tips for Finding Connection as a Mom

Menopause can shrink your social circle, too

Menopause hits during a stretch of life that's already stacked with change. Kids might be leaving home, and aging parents might need more care, all while careers often peak in demand right as hormones start disrupting sleep and mood. Somewhere in all of that, the casual, low-effort friendships that used to fill your calendar can fall away without fanfare.

Add in symptoms like hot flashes and brain fog, and even keeping up with the friends you already have can start to feel like a lot. Research backs up how much this matters: loneliness combined with social isolation during perimenopause has been linked to a significantly higher risk of cognitive decline, and isolation on its own raises cardiovascular disease risk too. [12,13,14]

On the flip side, friendship genuinely helps here. Surveys show most women feel more comfortable talking to friends about menopause than they do talking to their own doctor about it, which says a lot about how much friends matter during this stage. [15]

The tricky part is that midlife friend groups tend to scatter. Some friends are deep in grandparent era, while others are starting new careers or navigating divorce, and everyone's calendar looks completely different by now. Finding women who are actually in the same stage at the same time takes more intention than it used to, but it pays off.

🔎 Read more: Feeling Lonely in Menopause? What to Do

Your friendships aren't doomed during these life stages. The friendship recession just plays out differently depending on where you are in life, and these transitions tend to be some of its hardest-hit zones, which is exactly why building new, stage-specific connections matters so much here.

Why we need to do something about it

The stakes here go well beyond hurt feelings. The U.S. Surgeon General has called loneliness and isolation a full-blown epidemic, affecting up to 40% of adults. Weak social connection has been linked to health risks comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, along with a higher risk of heart disease and stroke, plus higher rates of anxiety and depression. [16]

Friendship functions as a health essential, right up there with sleep and movement, not some optional extra. Which is exactly why it's worth taking seriously instead of just shrugging and saying "adult friendships are hard" and moving on.

## How to actually make friends during a friendship recession

The good news: you can absolutely rebuild your social life at any age or stage, even if it feels like you have no friends. It just takes a slightly different approach than it did when you were younger and friendships happened to you in the school hallway.

• Lower the stakes: You don't need a soulmate best friend on the first hangout. Let friendships build slowly through repeated, low-pressure contact, like a regular walk or the same mom-and-baby class you keep showing up to.
• Be the one who reaches out: Someone has to send the first "hey, want to grab coffee" text. It might as well be you. Most people are just as nervous about rejection as you are, and most people are relieved when someone else makes the first move.
• Go where your people already are: Trying to make friends in a vacuum is hard. Trying to make friends in a space built around something you already have in common (a shared life stage, a shared interest, a shared identity) is much easier.
• Try Peanut: Peanut was built for this specific problem: connecting women through the life stages where the friendship recession hits hardest — TTC, pregnancy, motherhood, and menopause. Swipe to connect or join a community built around your stage or interest, find your people.
• Show up more than once: Consistency is what turns an acquaintance into a friend. One good conversation doesn't make a friendship; a few repeated ones usually do.
• Let go of the guilt: If you've drifted from old friends, that doesn't make you a bad person. Life stages change and priorities shift. Sometimes friendships just run their natural course. Making new friends now doesn't erase or disrespect the ones you had before.

The friendship recession doesn’t have to win

The friendship recession is real, it's widely documented, and it is absolutely not your fault. Adult friendship has gotten structurally harder to maintain than it used to be. The built-in chances to connect that previous generations had have disappeared, and transitions like trying to conceive, being pregnant, or becoming a new mom tend to feel that shift hardest of all.

Knowing you're part of a bigger, very human pattern, rather than uniquely bad at making friends, is honestly half the battle. The other half is putting yourself out there, even in small, low-pressure ways, in spaces built for genuine connection.

Ready to stop scrolling and start connecting? Join us on Peanut and meet women like you. Your new BFF could be one swipe away.