Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

From the Colson Center, I'm Shane Morris.

Comedian John Malaney once joked that one of Jesus's greatest miracles was having 12 close friends in his 30s.

Sadly, the modern decline of friendship is real and anything but a punchline.

The survey center on American Life reports that in 1990 almost 70% of

men had five or more close friends. By 2021, just 40% reported having that many.

And the number who said they had no close friends, quintupled.

Women haven't fared well either, though their friend groups haven't shrunk as rapidly.

Part of the challenge is that time together is the oxygen of friendship,

deprived of that, and friendship tends to die, or at least become more distant.

And today, perhaps due to a faster pace of life and more stuff piled into our schedules, spending time

with friends requires more effort and intentionality than in decades past.

Research shows that Americans now spend half as much time with their friends three hours a week as they did just a decade ago.

Writing at the Atlantic, Olga Kazin described this as a friendship paradox.

Quote, the typical American that seems texts a bunch of people we should get together

before watching Tik-Toc alone on the couch and then passing out.

That is, Americans have friends. We just never really see them.

And that's not so different from having no friends.

It'd be easy at this point to lecture people to get off their phones and go reconnect with someone over coffee.

And to be clear, that's not a bad idea.

But Kazin doesn't think our loneliness is entirely the fault of lazy or screen addicted individuals.

Instead, she blamed our rapidly growing isolation on the fact that we have so few regular opportunities

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