By Royane Real

Author of : “Your Guide to Finding Friends, Making Friends and Keeping Friends”

How many close friends do you have?  One? Two?  Five?

Do you think you have enough close friends, or do you wish you had more?

A few weeks I read in the newspaper that the average American person has only two close friends or relatives they can confide in.  And in most cases, the persons they confided in were usually members of their immediate family.

When I read this I was shocked, because I didn’t think that having only two people to confide in was enough.  And it turns out that just two decades ago, the average American person had at least three people they could confide in.  So, it seems the number of close friends the average American has is going down.

Although it might be hard to prove, the researchers also thought that most Americans now have far fewer people close to them than people who lived in that country would have had a hundred years ago.

Now, if you don’t happen to live in the United States, you might think, “What does that have to do with me?”  Many of the same factors that are making it harder for Americans to have really close friends that they can confide in are also affecting people in other parts of the world as well.

All over the world, more and more people have to move to big cities to try to find work.  Often they have to leave behind the close-knit communities where their families lived for generations.  Once these people get to the big cities, they find that cities can be very exciting places to live, but cities are also filled with lots of lonely people crammed close together.

Too often, the people crammed into these cities are not connecting with each other.

Many people today all over the world are having to work longer hours just to pay the bills and stay alive.  Lots of times they spend hours commuting, and when they come home they are too tired to do much more than eat supper and watch television.The sort of free time our grandparents had to visit with each other on the front porch and relax has often disappeared.

In many places, the sense of community has disappeared because too many buildings have been knocked down and replaced by high rise apartments and faceless malls.  Too many long time residents have moved away to be replaced by strangers.

Even the technology that is supposed to help us connect with each other can also keep us apart.  Television can show us what is happening to people around the globe, but when we keep our eyes glued to the television set, we end up not knowing the people who live down the street.

So, loneliness is becoming ever more common as we get more advanced.

Recently in my country, there was a tragic murder/suicide by a woman who had come to a big Canadian city from an eastern country.

This woman’s family had achieved a great deal of financial success in Canada, and they lived in a huge house in an expensive neighborhood where the people never saw each other.

Apparently, she had been a lot happier in her previous life, where the streets around her home were filled with life, with many family and neighbors to talk to.  She could not adjust to the isolation that has become a feature of modern life for so many people.

So, what can we do?  Wait for society to change?

I don’t believe there is really any such thing as society.  There is only us.  There is only people.

Instead of moaning about the fact that society has become too busy and too impersonal, let’s take some steps to change our own lives, right now.  Let’s slow down and examine whether we are getting the human contact we want.

And if we are not getting enough human contact, let’s start reaching out to others.  Let’s start making new friends now, wherever we are.

Reach out to others, talk to more people, show that you care about them, and thank them when they care about you.

This article was written by friendship expert Royane Real. 

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