THE average circle of close friends or confidants has shrunk over 20 years and many people now turn only to family members to discuss their most intimate concerns, research suggests.

An American study of behavioural trends has identified a marked decline in relationships outside the family that are stong enough to allow a person to divulge their deepest worries. It also found that the number of people who say they have no one with whom they can discuss important matters has more than doubled.

Researchers said that the trend towards greater social isolation may be a result of people working longer hours, living in less neighbourly communities, joining fewer clubs and seeking advice from sources such as the internet, sociologists believe.

The study, published in the American Sociological Review, was carried out by sociologists at Duke University and the University of Arizona. It compared data from 1985 and 2004 and found that the mean number of people with whom Americans can discuss matters important to them dropped by nearly a third, from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004.

Researchers also found that the number of people who said that they had no one with whom to discuss such matters more than doubled, to nearly 25 per cent. The survey found that both family and non-family confidants dropped, with the loss greatest in nonfamily connections.

Lynn Smith-Lovin, professor of sociology at Duke, said that the evidence clearly showed a damaging shift. “This change indicates something that is not good for our society,” she said. “Ties with a close network of people create a safety net. These ties also lead to civic engagement and local political action.”

The study paints a picture of Americans’ social contacts as a “densely connected, close, homogeneous set of ties slowly closing in on itself, becoming smaller, more tightly interconnected, more focused on the very strong bonds of the nuclear family”.

The survey asked 1,467 people over the age of 18 to give the first names of people with whom they had discussed matters that were important to them in the past six months. Researchers followed up with questions about the gender, race, education and age of their confidants, as well as family ties, the length of their relationship and frequency of contact.

The data come from the General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Centre at the University of Chicago and one of the longest-running US surveys of social, cultural and political issues. Professor Miller McPherson, a co-author at Duke, said that the team had been surprised at the size of the change over two decades and plans more research on social isolation. Professor McPherson said that the findings needed to be treated with caution because of the dramatic shift, but the quality of the analysis indicated that it was accurate.

“We were surprised to see such a large change, but even if [it] is exaggerated for some reason, given our analyses of the highest quality, nationally representative data available, we are confident there is a trend towards smaller, closer social networks more centred on spouses and partners.”

The research showed a decline in the number of groups that people belong to and in the time they spend with them. Family members spend more time at work and have less time to spend on activities outside the home that might lead to close relationships. New technology, though good for long-distance communication, might diminish the need for face-to-face visits with friends, family or neighbours, the study said.

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