Quick answer
The 2023 advisory counts friends, colleagues, and neighbors as social connection, and it tracks a drop in face-to-face friend time from 60 minutes a day to 20.
The Office of the Surgeon General's 2023 advisory, "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation," defines social connection as the structure, function, and quality of relationships with others. Relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors all count. Neighborhoods, digital environments, schools, and workplaces also inform connection. A platonic bond is not a leftover category in that definition. A friend, a colleague, and a neighbor are named in the same sentence as family.
If you have been treating intimacy as a romantic specialty, the advisory is a wider map. It does not rank a spouse above a friend and then stop. It says the structure, function, and quality of relationships are the thing under discussion, and it lists people you are not dating. That is the working definition this article will use for platonic intimacy: non-romantic connection that still has structure, still does something in your life, and still has a quality you can feel.
Who is included before romance enters the room
Family is on the list, and family is not always romantic. Friends are on the list. Colleagues are on the list, which means a tie at work can be part of social connection even when it never becomes a date. Neighbors are on the list, which means proximity can matter without a confession of love. The advisory also says the places around those people inform connection: the neighborhood, the digital environment, the school, the workplace. Platonic intimacy, in this document, is not only two best friends on a couch. It is also the web of people and settings that make support possible.
Adults across the globe, the advisory reports, rate social relationships, particularly family and close friends, as the most important source of meaning, purpose, and motivation. "Particularly family and close friends" puts non-romantic ties at the center of what people say matters. You do not need a romantic plot to be inside that sentence.
In 2021, 49 percent of Americans reported three or fewer close friends. In 1990, 27 percent reported the same. Among people not reporting loneliness or isolation, nearly 90 percent have three or more confidants. A 2022 study cited in the advisory found that only 39 percent of U.S. adults said they felt very connected to others. One study found a 16 percent decrease in network size from June 2019 to June 2020. Those figures are about the size and felt strength of people's circles. They are not a romantic-status report. A confidant can be a friend. A close friend can be the person you call when a partner is not the right ear.
The clock on in-person time with friends
In-person time with friends fell from 60 minutes a day in 2003 to 20 minutes a day in 2020, a decrease of 20 hours a month. That is the advisory's figure for friend time specifically, not a blended "time with people you love" number. Twenty minutes a day is a short visit, a walk, or part of a meal. Sixty minutes a day was already a modest block. The drop is large relative to where it started, and it is measured in minutes of being physically with friends.
Ages 15 to 24 show a steeper change. In-person time with friends in that age band fell by nearly 70 percent, from roughly 150 minutes a day in 2003 to 40 minutes a day in 2020. The advisory is describing teenagers and young adults, years when friendship is often the main intimate life a person has, whether or not they are also dating. Nearly 70 percent is not a mood. It is a before-and-after on the clock.
You can care about that drop without declaring that every minute away from friends is a sickness. The advisory's health findings belong with loneliness and lack of connection, and another article on this site separates those reports from raw time alone. What this page can say, because the advisory says it, is that in-person friend time shrank, and that it shrank hardest in the 15-to-24 group. If your own week has almost no face-to-face time with friends, you are looking at the same kind of minute-count the advisory tracked, not at a character flaw.
Phones, feeds, and the part of technology that still helps
The advisory does not treat screens as a single villain. Social media more than two hours a day was associated, in one U.S. study it cites, with about double the odds of increased perceived social isolation compared with under 30 minutes a day. Frequent phone use during in-person time with family and friends increased distraction, reduced conversation quality, and lowered self-reported enjoyment. Those are specific costs tied to heavy use and to phone use while you are already with people.
Technology can also help people stay in touch, including people with disabilities and people seeking community. Online support groups can carry information, advice, and emotional support. A platonic tie that lives partly online is not automatically false under this advisory. The distinction the text supports is between use that keeps people in contact and use that displaces the visit or wrecks the conversation you are already in.
The advisory's individual suggestions stay at that scale. Minimize distraction. Do not check the phone during meals and important conversations. Spend time with friends away from social media. Look for warning signs such as more time alone or limited interactions with friends. Seek opportunities to help other people. Helping someone is a platonic act the advisory names on purpose. It is a way of being in a relationship that is not organized around being chosen romantically.
Attachment language that is not only a couple
The APA Dictionary of Psychology, updated April 19, 2018, defines attachment first as the emotional bond between a human infant, or a young nonhuman animal, and a parent figure or caregiver. Security in that bond shows up as calmness while the caregiver is present. The entry then says attachment also denotes the tendency to form such bonds in infancy and the tendency in adulthood to seek emotionally supportive social relationships.
"Emotionally supportive social relationships" is plural, and it is not the word romance. Adult attachment, in that dictionary sentence, includes the search for support. A friendship can be that search. A tie with a colleague or a neighbor can be part of it when the tie actually functions as support. The dictionary line does not limit adulthood to a couple. Using attachment language only for dating leaves out the sentence the APA printed.
About one in two U.S. adults reported loneliness in recent years, and that was before COVID-19. Loneliness is associated, in the advisory, with greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. This article will not turn those risks into a claim that a quiet evening is unhealthy. The risks are tied to loneliness and to lacking social connection. Friendship, coworkers you can actually talk to, and neighbors you know are part of the connection the advisory says counts. The minute-count of time spent alone, and the separate fact that many people who feel lonely do not call it a major problem, are easy to tangle with the friend-time drop. They are not the same statistics.
This summary is public-health education, not a medical opinion about you. If low mood, worry, or a sense of having no one to call is sticking and you want care, a primary care clinician or a mental health professional can assess that. A national advisory cannot.
You can do a small inventory that stays inside the advisory's own list. Name the friends, colleagues, and neighbors who are actually in your week, not the ones you intend to text someday. Notice whether in-person friend time is closer to the 2003 hour or the 2020 twenty minutes. Notice whether the phone comes out during the meals and conversations you meant to keep. Notice whether you have a way to help someone, which the advisory lists alongside the warning signs.
The difference between minutes spent alone and the feeling of loneliness is laid out in time alone and loneliness as separate reports.
Who, among friends, colleagues, and neighbors, would you actually spend twenty undistracted minutes with this week?
Works named here
Office of the Surgeon General. (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
American Psychological Association. Attachment. APA Dictionary of Psychology, updated April 19, 2018. https://dictionary.apa.org/attachment
Frequently Asked Questions
- Who counts as connection besides a partner?
- The advisory names friends, coworkers, and people who live nearby, along with family. Schools, jobs, neighborhoods, and online settings also shape connection.
- How far did face-to-face friend time fall?
- Daily in-person minutes with friends moved from 60 in 2003 to 20 in 2020. Ages 15 to 24 lost close to seven-tenths of that time, from roughly 150 minutes down to 40.
- Does adult attachment mean only romance?
- A 2018 APA dictionary entry says adulthood includes a tendency to seek relationships that give emotional support. That line is wider than a couple.
- Is heavy social media the same as having no friends?
- One U.S. study in the advisory tied feeds over two hours a day to about twice the odds of feeling more isolated, compared with under half an hour. The same text says online groups can still carry advice and comfort, and that a phone during a visit makes the visit worse.
- When is loneliness a reason to get care?
- If low mood or worry will not ease, start with your doctor or a therapist. The advisory cannot examine one person's health.