Premier Christianity uses cookies Read our cookie policy. The world is experiencing a friendship recession. Sheridan Voysey explains how both culture and Church came to neglect friendship and how you can reclaim this forgotten love. Let me take you to a drab government seminar room sometime in My wife and I were exploring fostering and adoption, and as we gathered with others to learn what might be involved, our straight-talking facilitator prepared us by sharing her toughest stories.
I sat there, staring at the floor, my pen hovering over my workbook. I closed my workbook, unable to think of a name to write down. In the moment, it was the catalyst for me getting intentional about my own friendships. According to YouGov, around 20 per cent of Britons have no close friends, including seven per cent who have no friends at all. Our own research at Friendship Lab finds that more than half of us struggle to make new friends, and 40 per cent would like to be closer to the friends we have.
The question is why. The barriers against friendship are many. Blame can be laid at rabid individualism, political polarisation, the decline of community institutions, the negative effects of smartphones and social media, post-pandemic workplace changes and more. But while these factors play a part, other forces precede them. You may recognise these at work in your own life, as I have in mine. The friendless, we may think, are those relationally inept folks who need better social skills.
Not so, according to research. In most studies, friendlessness is rarely a matter of social skills. Instead, the most powerful force raging against friendship today is busyness.
With long workdays, lengthy commutes and endless activities to ferry children to and from, we may feel we have little time left for friends. Today, few of us live in the neighbourhood we grew up in. After school, we leave town for university. After university, we relocate again for work. With each move, our friendships need to adapt. But like a sapling lifted from its soil, some friendships wilt in transit. And with around 50 hours of socialising needed for an acquaintance to become a casual friend, making friends in our new homes takes time.
