Friendless In America By Ellen Goodman Analysis
Friendless in North America
By Ellen Goodman
1. Lynn Smith-Lovin was listening in the back seat of a taxi when a woman called the radio talk show hosts to confess her affairs with a new boyfriend and a not-yet-former husband. The hosts, in their best therapeutic voices, offered their on-air opinion, "Give me an S, give me an L, give me a U." You can spell the rest. It was the sort of exchange that would leave most of us wondering why anyone would share her intimate life story with a radio host. Didn't she have anyone else to talk with? Smith-Lovin may have been the only one in the audience with an answer to that question: Maybe not.
2. The Duke University sociologist is co-author of one of those blockbuster studies that makes us look at ourselves. This one is labeled, “Friendless in America.” A face-to-face study of 1,467 adults turned up some disheartening news. One-fourth reported that they have nobody to talk to about “important matters.” Another quarter reported they are just one person …show more content…
There is no shortage of speculation about why our circle of friends is eroding. The usual suspect is the time crunch. It’s knocked friendship off the balancing beam of life as we attend to work and family. It’s left less time for the groups and associations that bind us. But in the last twenty years, technology has changed the way we use out “relationship time.” Walk along any city street and people talking on cell phones are more common than pigeons. Go into Starbucks and a third of the customers are having coffee dates with their laptops. “It could be that talking to people close to us on cell phones has caused our social circle to shrink,” says Smith-Lovin. It could be that we are both increasingly in-touch and isolated. It’s become easier to keep extensive relationships over time and distance but harder to build the deep ones in our backyard. In the virtual neighborhood, how many have substituted email for intimacy, contacts for confidants, and Facebook for
By Ellen Goodman
1. Lynn Smith-Lovin was listening in the back seat of a taxi when a woman called the radio talk show hosts to confess her affairs with a new boyfriend and a not-yet-former husband. The hosts, in their best therapeutic voices, offered their on-air opinion, "Give me an S, give me an L, give me a U." You can spell the rest. It was the sort of exchange that would leave most of us wondering why anyone would share her intimate life story with a radio host. Didn't she have anyone else to talk with? Smith-Lovin may have been the only one in the audience with an answer to that question: Maybe not.
2. The Duke University sociologist is co-author of one of those blockbuster studies that makes us look at ourselves. This one is labeled, “Friendless in America.” A face-to-face study of 1,467 adults turned up some disheartening news. One-fourth reported that they have nobody to talk to about “important matters.” Another quarter reported they are just one person …show more content…
There is no shortage of speculation about why our circle of friends is eroding. The usual suspect is the time crunch. It’s knocked friendship off the balancing beam of life as we attend to work and family. It’s left less time for the groups and associations that bind us. But in the last twenty years, technology has changed the way we use out “relationship time.” Walk along any city street and people talking on cell phones are more common than pigeons. Go into Starbucks and a third of the customers are having coffee dates with their laptops. “It could be that talking to people close to us on cell phones has caused our social circle to shrink,” says Smith-Lovin. It could be that we are both increasingly in-touch and isolated. It’s become easier to keep extensive relationships over time and distance but harder to build the deep ones in our backyard. In the virtual neighborhood, how many have substituted email for intimacy, contacts for confidants, and Facebook for