Sunday, October 18, 2009



In deciding what to do for my Commonweal Project, I concluded to spend my efforts in researching a particular passion of mine... that is friendship. I resolved to create my own survey of two different generations of women, to ask them the number of their close confidants, and then compare my findings with an NPR's interview with Lynn Smith-Lovin, of Duke University, on Social Isolation: Americans have fewer close confidants. To apply this study, I though I'd see how the statistics, proposed by Ms. Lynn Smith-Lovin, paralleled some of the women I knew across the country. Her findings are as followers: from the year 1985 to the present, the number of close confidants for the average American has dropped from 3 to 2. While Ms. Lynn-Smith-Lovin's statistics are based on time periods, my statistics are based on two different age groups of women across country.

Accordingly, I decided I'd team up with my mom to check the friend status of two different generations of women. Group 1, in the study, are women from age 35-55 (all mothers), and group 2 are High School/ College age women/girls 15-25 (none of which are mothers). My mom and I each interviewed 10 women from among our own acquaintances around the country. The representative sample came from 11 different states, including: OH, MI, CA, TX, CO, NY, TN, NC, MO, VA, and KY.
Each picture depicts, the tedious time spent in interviewing the twenty women, in asking two basic questions: "How many intimate friends, would you say you have?" and "What is the characteristic that you deem
most important in those friends?
When questioning group 2, I went a step further in asking how many
Facebook friends they had. I wanted to see if there was any correlation
between the broad number of Facebook friends and close confidants.
This would determine, for me, that the rise of connection to people through technology had an effect on the number of intimate friends people have. I desired a fresh perspective on the study of Ms. Lynn Smith-Lovin on the decline in intimate friends within
the past 34 years.... so my mom and I set out on this quest. Being the social optimists we are, we simply could not settle for this drastic decline and depressing statistic. For as the song goes "We all need somebody to lean on."

Here are our findings:
Group 1
Where # of Friends Why?
TX 7 Trust
OH 4 Being Trustworthy CA 4 Maturity Level
NC 5 Trust
MO 5 Trust
NC 4 Reliability That They Won't Gossip
TN 3 Must Be On The Same Page In Life
TX 4 Trust
KY 3 Trust
NC 5 Ability To Maintain Life Long Relationship

Group 2

Where? # Of Friends Why? # Facebook Friends
TN 4 Maturity/Connect no facebook
VA 3 Proven Loyalty 458
MI 3 Being Understanding 945
CA 3 Not Judgmental 250
MO 3 Personality/Connection 166
NC 4 Reliable/Proven--> Time 490
NC 4 Mutual Understanding 660
CL 4 Personal Loyalty 887
CA 4 Understanding/No Judgement 1,132
NY 1 Good Listener/"Hear Me Out" 190


In conclusion, I examined the contrast between Lynn Smith-Lovin's findings, from NPR's interview on Social Isolation: Americans have fewer close confidants, with my own. I take in account that my own study groups were all women, and from only 11 states, and only two different age groups, with separation of at the most 39 years. I found that older woman draw upon trust as their number one characteristic in a close confidant. Younger women draw more upon a mutual connection to a particular person, the personality connect, and the ability to rely on that friend to not judge them but listen to them with understanding. Although my numbers don't agree with the more prestigious study, I did find that from the group 1 to group 2 there was a 1 friend average decline (from 4.4 to 3.3). So maybe my mom and I have acquaintances that are a little more social than the average American, but I was still

disappointed with the results of decrease from one generation to the next. I also was surprised to find Ms. Lynn Smith-Lovin was correct when she said there was no found connection to the rise of technology to the number of close confidants, this corresponded to my question as to how many Facebook friends each of my interviewees had. Before my study I thought, the more Facebook friends a person would have the less close confidants they would have. I found this to be untrue, yet I see uphold the option that social networking (Twitter, Facebook, texting, email, im, Myspace,...etc.) generates an overall broad base of friendships instead of a small personal investment in deep relationships. Lastly, my one representative from NY, had the least amount of close confidants. I thought this intriguing since it is the most populated of the cities represented.



Ironically, this weekend when I went to church, and as part of the service they played this video on friendship, to show the importance of it in society.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wshSvV5dw1E

1 comment:

  1. You definitely put a lot of thought and time into this lab. Awesome job. -Catherine P

    ReplyDelete