Nearly 20% of Americans Have 'Zero Friends'

Announcing 'Unwrapped,' a new Crunchwrap project

Dear Friends,

I’ve been thinking a lot about the theme of loneliness – and not just because I’m a dude with a newsletter thankyouverymuch. One meaningful through line in my next book is about how the relentless expansion of work into off-hours, the lack of support systems, and our endless quest for productivity have come at the expense of free time in America.

This is time, of course, that might go to friends, family, community, and to collecting an understanding of the world (and each other) that isn’t mediated and distorted by social media.

Our lack of time is an indictment of American capitalism, sure, but it’s also an indictment of the adjacent culture that informs our hours away from work. My old colleague Julie Beck has a great primer on the rise of “productive leisure,” a lifestyle characterized by productive hobbies that have taken the place of rest or regular old leisure.

“If you’ve ever felt like your Instagram feed is taunting you with all the lovely crafts, elaborate home-cooked meals, and sweaty Peloton rides that other people seem to manage to fill their time with; if you’ve ever felt like your dating profile looks empty unless you list several impressive leisure pursuits; if it seems like everyone has a hobby and you should too, there is a reason for this,” she writes. “The anxieties of capitalism are not confined to the workplace. They have a long history of leaking into our free time.”

Now, this is not to say all productive hobbies are bad. Having a new personal record to show your feed of fellow fitness nuts on Strava is not inherently a bad thing, but it can be if doing something actually restful – sitting idly, watching baseball – induces the sense that you should be doing something else, something more…productive.

My off-duty life is filled with a variation on this theme that I’ll call leisure sabotage: I take walks to break up my work day and clear my mind, but often not without keeping a steady eye on my step count or listening to a podcast for research. I’ll catch myself tidying up when I’m on the phone with friends. (Sorry.) Even when I’ve consciously set aside time to read for pleasure, I open the news apps instead of the book I have waiting for me because it seems more useful.

These acts of leisure sabotage are all a bit subjective, but I generally know when I’m turning an activity that’s meant to be relaxing…into something less so.

Data seems to back up the idea that the tab at the bars we’re not going to with our friends anymore is adding up. According to the U.S. Census Time Use Survey, Americans are spending less than half as much time with friends as they did a decade ago. This is a trend that precedes the pandemic.

In 2024…17 percent of Americans say they have zero friends.

Revelations like this have spurred broader investigations into how we do spend our time. And apparently, many of us are spending it more alone than ever. Writing in The Washington Post earlier this month, Anna Goldfarb pointed out that back in 1990, only 1 percent of Americans said they had zero friends. In 2024, according to the Survey Center on American Life, 17 percent of Americans say they have zero friends.

Here is an eye-opening chart from the piece:

All of this preamble is my way of introducing a new feature to The Crunchwrap: Unwrapped. Unwrapped will be this newsletter’s informal exploration of….well…being out in the world. Being part of a community. Leaving your house. I’m told that the kids have a neat little name for this imperative called touching grass.

Some of the inspiration for Unwrapped, to be quite honest, does come out of personal isolation. In late 2019, I left Brooklyn for NYC’s northern suburbs, closer to where the future Mrs. Crunchwrap got an impressive new job. From there, life went straight into the bizarro social undulations of the pandemic…straight into the often solitary work of the freelance life and book writing.

I’m emerging from that now only to realize that I haven’t had an office to go to since early 2020, which seems rad when I’m hiking with my dog on a Tuesday afternoon, but not as rad when I’m telling him about NYC’s congestion pricing drama on the trail.

And though I’m exceedingly #blessed with great friends near and far that I’m able to see regularly, I’m still a little unsure of how to better plug myself into the community I’m now a part of. Looking around, it doesn’t take a social scientist to understand why this feels like a worthy pursuit.

This newsletter will be a way for me to hold myself accountable and hopefully learn more about everything around me.

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Reader Corner

Josh D., a loooongtime friend of The Crunch, weighs in with his impressions of Taco Bell Cheez-It Crunchwrap, which I wrote about last week:

Agreed on the cheez it not having that pop. All about the texture. I’m sure I’ve told you but when we do taco night here we do the old double decker taco. Still not over its discontinuation.

Are you listening Yum execs? Stop fussing with newfangled nonsense and bring back the Double Decker!

A Formal Study of Taco Bell's Cheez-It Crunchwrap

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NY Times Cooking Comment Watch

Sometimes a dinner that comes together in 30 minutes isn’t one that changes your entire life. Colu Henry’s lemon-herb pasta with zucchini was a totally serviceable weeknight meal that I made because I hadn’t shopped for groceries, but had some yellow squash, egg noodles, lemons, and herbs lying around.

Unfortunately for a hard-o like RP, if you’re not tweaking roadside on the highway to Flavortown, you might as well just not eat anything.

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Nu, What Else?

• Speaking of the fraught particulars of modern friendship, HOLY COW, this piece by Annie Hamilton about her dogged pursuit of a friendship with the writer/wunderkind Tavi Gevinson is a wild read. (GQ)

• I nurture a lot of pet theories that I can’t bring myself to publish here and a very recent one has to do with National Retail Federation data about how Americans spend money by gender for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. (NRF)

• Here’s a nice little story about what three underdog billionaires managed to do for the city of Detroit after purchasing 70 percent of the downtown office space. (Bloomberg Businessweek)

• Yesterday was Bloomsday! Here’s James Murphy on why James Joyce heads and people who pretend to have read Ulysses are doing the classic novel a disservice by celebrating it. (Vanity Fair)

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That’s it for this week! See you out there, friends.

XOXO,

Adam