Marginalium

The Myth Of The Loneliness Epidemic. Contra my article on the loneliness epidemic. They pose the question:

Alarms over the state of American friendship are nothing new. Over the last few decades, there has been a surge in writing about friendship in books and newspapers. Does this surge reflect a real crisis or simply the increasing value Americans place on friendships? Or is it just a popular cultural meme unmoored from reality?

I’m not left very swayed. They begin by pointing out how troublesome ‘friendship’ is to measure, then decide they the way they did it is better and conclude that the quality of friendship is at least the same, if not better. Then they go on to point out what might explain people feeling like they have less friends even though they don’t have a change in quality, which feels a bit equivocal—why is their measure of quality more important than people’s experience of it?

It’s basically an argument that we have higher expectations of friendship now, and when we go for the old ‘people are less hardcore than before’ argument it invariably does nothing to improve the situation for anyone.