You’ve Got A Friend

One of the great challenges of our super connected world is seen in a statistic that seems completely counterintuitive. Loneliness is on the rise.

Weird, right? But it gets a little weirder.

I just read, “The highest rates of loneliness are reported among individuals aged 16-24, with about 40% admitting to feeling lonely.” As you consider that, note this: the demographic with the most daily screen time is (you guessed it) 16-24.

Age Group	Female	Male
16-24	7 hours 32 minutes	7 hours 7 minutes

The number that keeps coming to my mind is one that was kind of a thing when I was growing up: the 40 hour work week. That was 8 hours a day for 5 days in the week. It doesn’t take much math to figure out that the 16-24 age group (both females and males) are sneaking up on a full work week of screen time.

When I was in the 16-24 age group, screens were not a thing. I’m a digital immigrant, not a digital native, and though I bought my first Apple computer in 1984 (“the commercial” made me do it), and spent a fair amount of time using it, the internet did not then exist. Were I 16-24 now, would I bring that 7 hour and 7 minute average up or down? Hard to say, but I suspect it would be down. My own average screen time is around 3 hours a day, and that includes a lot of maps and perhaps even more music.

Back to the past

Last weekend I “time traveled” back to the little town in Southern Illinois where I grew up. That is to say, where I grew from an infant to a 20 year old. Four years of that time included high school, and the reason I returned home was to attend the reunion of my graduating class. Around 130 of us graduated way back then, and somewhere around half of us attended the reunion. I loved it!

Why? Because some of those people are my life-long friends. Even some who came to town just before or even during high school became great friends. This year I had a chance to visit with a couple of classmates I didn’t know well in high school, and now wish I had. They are new old friends.

Were some of my classmates in high school (and in college) lonely? I’m sure they were, although I was perhaps too insensitive to know it. In high school we were a long way away from perfect, and we had groups that formed naturally — which meant not everyone was included. At the time it seemed to me that almost everyone had someone who was a friend, but I was probably wrong.

Why it matters

The reunion got me to thinking about friendships, and as I was doing that a song came on in my favorites play list. The title of that song is Unfair Weather Friend, recorded by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. Then I thought about You’ve Got A Friend, written by Carole King (pictured above), and that reminded me of something really cool.

Not long ago I was looking for some music online and found a clip of an interview James Taylor, who was the first person to record You’ve Got A Friend, did with Stephen Colbert. James and Carole had done a lot of work together, but in the songwriting world no one can be the first to record a song without permission from the copyright holder. Taylor did that with Friend, though, because he said, “it was the greatest song ever written by a human.” Then he went to King and told her he had recorded the song. Instead of threatening a lawsuit, she said, “That’s great!” But here’s the cool part.

Carole told James a little later that a line in one of his most popular songs, Fire and Rain, had inspired her to write You’ve Got A Friend. The line was this: “I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.” He said she told him, “I’m going to write this song and tell him he does have a friend.”

The desire — really the need — for friends can be seen in this: James Taylor is one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all time, but his only Number 1 hit was You’ve Got A Friend. Why was the song so popular?

Because we’ve all known lonely times when we could not find a friend, and we’ve all longed to be reminded that we do have a friend. In fact if you need that reminder now, here’s a link to a video of James Taylor singing the song live way back in 1971 with Carole King accompanying him on piano.

Connected?

All of us understand that we need friends. There was a long article in the May/June 2026 Saturday Evening Post titled “Your Brain Needs Friends.” It was written by Ben Rein, Ph.D., and it delves into the physical difference not having friends makes to your brain. It helped me understand why friendships will help you heal faster if you get sick. And, if you are healthy but isolated, you are likely to get sick more easily.

He points out that the harshest form of punishment is solitary confinement. We’ve known that for hundreds of years, and yet many of us place ourselves in solitary confinement voluntarily. We don’t think we are doing that, of course, because we think we are connected online.

This is not a super-connected world. We are, in fact, less connected and more isolated than ever. If we are to survive, that has to change. Neither the internet nor AI are good answers for isolation. People — especially friends — are.

Flying back to Illinois to see friends was good for my soul. If that is true for me, it’s probably true for others as well. So, in addition to knowing I’ve got friends, I want to be a friend. You can do that, too. Log off the screen, and go have coffee or breakfast or just a visit with someone. Tell them with your actions, “you’ve got a friend.”

Do good! It’s in you.