American teenagers are pulling back from in-person social life at a measurable rate, opting out of activities that once defined adolescence, including simply spending time with friends. That is among the central findings of the 2026 American Teenagers Survey released July 23 by Daniel A. Cox, Jae Grace, and Avery Shields at the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life.
Teenagers redefining what adolescence looks like
If teenage years once represented a time of rebellion, teenagers’ lives today are marked less by pushing boundaries and more by building their own. Many traditional teenage experiences are less common than they once were.
The 2026 American Teenagers Survey, covering ages 13 to 17, shows that a substantial number are opting out of more conventional activities. Surveyed teens report that they do not regularly eat meals with family, attend religious services, read, or spend time with friends.
Yet many remain satisfied with their lives even as they express pessimism about the country and worry about their futures. Technology, the survey concludes, has played an outsized role in reshaping American adolescence.
The retreat from in-person socializing among teens follows a longer arc documented by researchers across multiple institutions. The average number of close friends reported by Americans fell from 2.94 in 1990 to 2.23 by 2021. The new teenagers survey suggests that trajectory is being reinforced at the formative stage of life, before adult friendship patterns are even set.
A structural shift, not a phase
As Americans spend more of their time online, the neighborhood, once a primary physical location for real-world socialization, is playing less of a central role than ever before. Researchers at the Survey Center have framed that shift not as a temporary trend but as a structural change in how young people organize daily life.
The structures that used to manufacture friendship, dorms, teams, classes, first jobs where everyone is new together, fall away in adulthood, and nothing automatically replaces them. The 2026 survey suggests that for today’s teenagers, even the foundational social structures of adolescence are weakening before adulthood begins.
The share of American men with no close friends rose from 3% in 1990 to 15% in 2021, a fivefold increase. The Survey Center on American Life’s American Perspectives Survey documented a steep collapse in men’s close friendships over three decades.
The decline was sharpest for men, but women were not immune, and the new teenager data points to the pipeline that feeds those adult figures.
Screens fill the gap left by in-person time
Time spent socializing in person has fallen markedly since the 1970s. The American Time Use Survey and earlier time-diary research show face-to-face socializing declining over decades, with a particularly steep drop among young people in the 2010s as screen time rose.
That substitution effect is central to what the 2026 survey describes. Teenagers report building self-directed lives largely mediated by technology.
The social cost of less time spent together compounds quickly. Research consistently shows that the bonds of friendship, in number and quality, robustly predict happiness and life satisfaction. Spending time with friends explains variance in happiness and well-being beyond what is explained by visits with family or neighbors.
What the numbers mean for social life ahead
The Survey Center’s findings land against a backdrop of other data showing nearly half of Americans say leisure and fun have dried up, with cost and packed schedules cited as the main barriers. For teenagers, the survey suggests the issue runs deeper than scheduling: the desire to spend time with peers in person appears to be diminishing alongside the opportunity.
Americans still place a high premium on friendship, consistently ranking close friends as more important to a fulfilling life than being married, having children, or having a lot of money, according to prior Survey Center research.
Whether the generation now moving through adolescence will carry that value into adulthood in practice, not just in sentiment, is a question the ongoing survey is designed to track.
The 2026 teenagers survey also documents declines in other social touchstones of youth. Dating, working a part-time job, and experimenting with drugs and alcohol are all in retreat, pointing to a broader reconfiguration of what the teenage years involve.
For researchers studying the long-term health of American social life, a subject already explored through the lens of a dating recession among young adults, the 2026 teenager data raises urgent questions about whether the habits of connection form later, or simply fail to form at all.
