In A Book About Love, I wrote about research showing that the social networks of Americans have been shrinking for decades. Miller McPherson, a sociologist at the University of Arizona and Duke University, has helped document the decline. In 1985, 26.1 percent of respondents reported discussing important matters with a “comember of a group,” such as a church congregant. In 2004, McPherson found that the percentage had fallen to 11.8. In 1985, 18.5 percent of subjects had important conversations with their neighbors. That number shrank to 7.9 percent two decades later. Other studies have reached similar conclusions. Robert Putnam, for instance, has used the DDB Needham Life Style Surveys to show that the average married couple entertained friends at home approximately fifteen times per year in the 1970s. By the late 1990s, that number was down to eight, “a decline of 45 percent in barely two decades.”

These surveys raise the obvious question: If we’re no longer socializing with our neighbors, or having dinner parties with our friends, then what the hell are we doing?

One possibility is screens. Conversation is hard; it’s much easier to chill with Netflix and the cable box. According to this depressing speculation, technology is an enabler of loneliness, allowing us to forget how isolated we’ve become.

But there’s another possibility. While it seems clear that we’re spending less time with our friends and acquaintances (texting doesn’t count), we might be spending more time with our spouses and children. (McPherson found, for instance, that the percentage of Americans who said their spouse was their “only confidant” nearly doubled between 1985 and 2004.) If true, this would suggest that our social network isn’t fraying so much as it’s gradually becoming more focused and intimate.

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