The DOI links aren't working so I can't read the study but I think there's a simple explanation, that also belies the headline. It may be that the typical number of close friends is now 0. But as people no longer even have any concept of close friendships, they're considering 'lesser' relationships as close friendships, because it's all they know.
This is made even more likely if they didn't define the term and allowed 'online friends' to be counted as 'close friends.' And I strongly suspect this may be the case since the graph shows a major inflection point in the increase of friends being 2007, the exact year when Facebook started becoming massive.
Feels true. People have a larger number of less-close friends.
Social media has taken over a lot more of young people's social life than it used to. Parents don't want young people to leave the house and play outside, so kids spend the time online. These patterns may persist into adulthood - hard to say.
How could one compare depth of friendship of even two current friendships, let alone of current friendships with historical ones that are only accessible through people's mutable memories?
But how can you measure except subjectively, and how can you compare subjective measurements when the whole point is that people's very idea of the meaning of phrases like "close friendship" have changed?
Its not my area, but apart from the the person subjective opinion there would be indirect ways to measure it. again I'm just guessing without looking around.
I can't find this study even searching for the author's name and the title. FYI, the cited author Stefan Thurner has published 73 articles in peer reviewed journals in the past 3 years (all of the ones I glanced at appeared to involve statistical correlations), so they are very prolific.
This is made even more likely if they didn't define the term and allowed 'online friends' to be counted as 'close friends.' And I strongly suspect this may be the case since the graph shows a major inflection point in the increase of friends being 2007, the exact year when Facebook started becoming massive.