Young People's Close Relationships Are Shrinking

A new global survey of 7,105 adolescents and young adults across 11 countries finds that close relationships are shrinking fast. The average number of close relationships a young person reports fell from 5.3 in 2023 to 4.4 in 2025, and respondents say they have only two people they can talk to about things that really matter, according to a release from Young Life, the organization behind the RELATE Project research. The second wave of the study also included 22 focus groups with 97 participants, whose conversations paint the same picture as the numbers.

The twist is that this generation is not giving up on close relationships. Face-to-face communication was the preferred way to connect with friends for 64% of respondents, a ten-point climb since 2023. As Newt Crenshaw, the group's president and CEO, put it in the announcement, young people are "craving authentic, in-person community" even though they are constantly connected online.

Why close relationships are getting harder to keep

The survey suggests the problem is not desire but trust. Two in five young people are not fully confident there is an adult in their life who is genuinely interested in listening to them, and confidentiality is the top priority for nearly three-quarters when it comes to trusting an adult, as reported by CNI News, which carried the findings. When trust feels risky, circles stay small.

The researchers argue adults have a bigger role to play than they think. "Relationships are the foundation of adolescent flourishing, self-worth and agency," said Dr. Kimberly Nollan, the group's director of research and practice, urging adults to put down their own distractions and show up in young people's worlds. Her advice: prove you are safe enough to listen, protect confidentiality, and offer space instead of rushing in with advice or judgment.

AI is filling the gap where close relationships used to be

Roughly a third of young people now use an AI companion, a share that climbs to almost half among younger teens aged 13 to 15. And most users lean on the bots for the heavy stuff: six in ten say they feel more comfortable sharing with their AI than with some of their real-world friends or family members.

The appeal is obvious. AI companions offer constant validation, simulated empathy, and immediate availability. The risk, the research team warns, is that swapping human relationships for synthetic ones lets young people skip the hard parts of connection: navigating conflict, disappointment, apology, and repair. Those are the very skills that keep real close relationships alive, and they cannot be practiced with a chatbot that never gets upset and never needs forgiving.

Policymakers are starting to react to the trend. New York City, for example, has moved to keep companion chatbots out of its public schools entirely while still allowing classroom AI tools for lesson planning, a stance GenZ NewZ previously examined. The message from regulators and researchers is converging: a homework helper and an always-available digital friend are different products with different risks.

It is worth noting where this research comes from. The organization behind the survey is a Christian youth ministry built around face-to-face mentoring, so it has a clear stake in human relationships winning out over chatbots. But there is also a more hopeful reading of the data: the same study that documents shrinking circles shows a ten-point rise in young people who prefer talking in person. That suggests the bots are filling a gap young people did not ask for, not replacing something they no longer want.

What could rebuild close relationships

For readers, the takeaway is less about teenagers and more about everyone. Protecting the close relationships you already have looks a lot like what the researchers advise adults to do: keep confidences, listen without immediately trying to fix, and show up in person even when a text would be easier. The focus-group conversations behind the numbers point in the same direction. Presence, it turns out, beats platforms.

Young people are already improvising their own workarounds for staying close, from group chats to the kind of meme-driven friendships GenZ NewZ recently covered. The survey's full findings are worth a read for anyone who works with or cares about young people, and the full report is available online. For more stories like this, explore our Voices topic page.