It's Too Easy to End Friendships

Last week my friend was in town and we got together. We sent a picture to our parents, and their response was that we have been friends for over 30 years. We felt old.

We've known each other since we were four or five years old, and went on camping trips, dug holes in the backyard, explored in the creek, went wading in a pond to catch tadpoles and came out with dozens of leeches latched onto our feet (story for another time). You know, that kind of friend.

By high school, we were geographically separated. Now we pretty much just text on our birthdays, and we'll see each other once every couple of years if one of us happens to be traveling to a city near by. But we are still friends.

Despite the years and the distance, we still made it a point to get together.

Something has happened to modern frienship. Making friends today seems hard. Keeping friends, even harder. We have made it too easy to end friendships and relationships, and the impact on society is becoming significant.

For example, I still know that friend’s landline number by heart, though I couldn’t tell you his cell phone number. That landline number will stick with me as long as my memory stays in tact. I can't block it.

And that right there is what is happening to modern friendship. We are living in a world where we can easily block someone or unfriend someone without so much as a second thought.

We've made relationships so transactional.

We can’t even have an impromptu hangout or phone calle, instead we send a calendar link, and you have to fit within that time slot. Once the 30 minutes is expired, it’s on to the next thing. We’ve eliminating walking over to the next door neighbor. Even in the workplace, it seems less common to just walk over to someone’s office and popping your head in the door.

In the early 2000s, about 9% of Americans' Friday evening time was spent with friends. That’s honestly lower than I would have thought…but it is a benchmark nontheless.

By 2019, it declined to 7%. By 2024, only 4% of people were with friends on a Friday night. Total weekly time with friends has been cut roughly in half, from about 350 minutes to 170 (Caren, 2026). Of course, a Friday night engagement is not the sole indicator of friendships, but the trend is worth noting.

We have become comfortable being at home and not being in community.

In fact, and I am guilty of this. Many times I would prefer to be sitting on my couch, in the comfort of my own home. And, if I feel I want that social connection, I’ll grab my phone and text someone without actually engaging in a true interaction. We falsely satisfy a lot of our friendship desires by connecting through a screen, but not actually engaging in the uncomfortableness real life friends.

It’s that awkward feeling as a host, "When are they ever going to leave our house…it’s past our bedtime?" Or, the opposite, after saying goodbye, looking at my wife and say, “Did we offend them? They left quick.”

Data shows that traditionally, the older people get, the lonelier they feel. They become empty nesters, and they start to lose friends. They often retire and might not have the same community that they had before.

Researchers described loneliness as a U-shape, peaking in young adulthood and again in old age (Luhmann & Hawkley, 2016). But something has shfited. Now 22% of adults under 50 say they often feel lonely, compared to 9% of those 50 and older (Pew Research Center, 2025). The U is no longer a U.

Meanwhile, 38% of Americans are currently estranged from at least one family member. I’ve talked about the estrangemnet phenomenon before. And there are times I believe it is not only okay but also wise to separate yourself from certain situations. But, like anything, I think there has been some overcorrection with how quickly some rush to click the estrangement button as if it was as easy as unfriending someone or blocking a number.

The stats on estrangment are pretty staggering: 24% say they are estranged from a sibling, 16% from a parent, and10% from a child. Adults are about twice as likely to say they cut off a parent as to say a parent cut them off (YouGov, 2025).

As a parent, I just can't imagine.

Growing up, Millennials were the often at the center of the family universe. The calendar often revolved around their sports, drama, music lessons, art class, chess club, dance, you name it. We made a lot of friends on those teams, and we got to go through things with those people which is probably why (Millennials) said we spent more time with friends as teenager than Baby Boomers did (see chart below).

But it also likely led us to overcorrect as adults and try to win back some of that time.

At the same time, Millennials also grew up in the era where if we didn't like someone, we could unfriend someone. I remember the drama in high school and college that would come with seeing someone's relationship status on Facebook, unfriending someone, or getting anxious whether or not someone liked our post. "Did this person get off Facebook? They didn't. Oh, they must have blocked me."

Millennials grew up in an era where validation of friendship was fabricated through an account on a platform.

From day one, they were fed technology as a solution before we realized how dangerous it actually was.

It’s probably no surprise that 60% of Gen X regularly spent time with friends through most or all of their teenage years. For Millennials, it was 54%.

But then the drop came…Gen Z spent the least amount of time with their friends at only 40%. At the same time, 61% of Gen Z felt lonely or isolated during their teen years, the highest of any generation (Cox et al., 2023).

Many parents of Gen Z handed them an iPhone or a tablet to keep them happy. It kept the kid quiet and engaged, maybe laughing at the screen, while the parents could enjoy a mostly peaceful meal. But that traded building relationships, learning discipline, learning decorum in a public place, learning to be engaged in your surroundings.

Gen Z was born into a world where “Unfriend” and “blocked” were normal every day language—people didn’t even think twice about it. Cancel culture was infused into their DNA. It takes more effort to slide a quarter into a gumball machine and turn that crank and wait for that gumball to come swirling all the way out of the bottom and open that little metal door than it does to unfriend someone.

And let’s be honest, having friends, especially as a teenager is full of challenges. You and your best friend argue over a crush, your friend is invited to a party and you weren’t. Plus, back in the day when you had to call the landline, you had to go through the most fearsome gatekeepers ever: parents.

So, it is no wonder that 12% of U.S. teens use chatbots for emotional support or advice on a regular basis (Pew Research Center, 2026). As many as 72% have used an AI companion, and about one in three say those conversations are as satisfying as talking with real friends (Common Sense Media, 2025).

When my family and I go out to eat (which is rare these days, trying to corral three kids into a restaurant), it is so encouraging to see many fewer iPads and phones in front of kids' faces than I did a decade ago. It seems like a positive, anecdotal trend.

Friendships take work. Work is hard and awkward. And, not all friendships work out.

It's often said that If you ask a kid to name five of their parents' closest friends, few would be able to name them. In fact, do that right now. Who were your mom’s five closest friends? Can you name even three of your dad’s?

Here’s what that means for us….If the older generations aren't modeling friendship and relationship, regardless of how messy it is, how in the world are the younger generations supposed to get this right?

My parents still have a toy from when I was a baby. It is yellow bucket with a blue lid that has holes cut out in the shape of a triangle, a circle, and a square. I think I get more enjoyment of. this toy as a 30-something watching my kids, as babies, try to figure out which shape goes in what hole. They'll pick up the triangle and try to shove it in the circle hole, and it doesn't work. Then they'll pick up the square and get frustrated because not everything's a perfect fit.

You're going to have relationships that last a lifetime. You're going to have relationships that last a semester at school. But you have to invest in trying to build friendships to know which ones stick and which ones don’t.

We have tried to smooth all the edges and make life so easy, but two smooth surfaces never stick. Life isn’t that easy and that’s okay.

Modern technology has allowed us to feel the illusion of friendhip and connectiveness and yet be alone.There’s an old African proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

We were not meant to do life alone.

As technology continues to become more advanced and emulates humans more and more, it feels easier to be alone for a season, because technology can fill those voids.

It can now comfort you. In the moment, it can offer platitudes and make you feel better about yourself.

But it is the grossest lie of our time. Because the technology doesn't love you. It has no capability or capacity to love. And when we're entrusting our community to a machine, we're trading possibly the most fundamental part about being a human: living in community with other humans.

A good friend of mine once described reaching out to someone on their birthday as "the lowest hanging fruit to keep a friendship alive."

Who do you need to text today? Or even better, pick up the phone, unscheduled and call. And best yet, go back and invest the effort to memorize your friend's phone number.

Inspire Forward,

Sources: full Works Cited with this essay on ryanvet.com