Why We’re All Too Busy for Friends - The Atlantic

We all want more time with our friends, but we’re spending more time alone.

Listen − 1.0 x + Seek 0:00 5:42 Americans are afflicted by an “ epidemic of loneliness ,” according to the surgeon general and dozens of researchers. The phrase conjures a nation of friendless hermits who have no one to invite to their birthday parties. But according to a pair of new surveys, American loneliness is more complex than that. The typical American, it seems, texts a bunch of people “We should get together!” before watching TikTok alone on the couch and then passing out. That is, Americans have friends. We just never really see them. For a study published in July, Natalie Pennington

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