A recent study using data from the 2004 “General Social Survey,” reports that

“Americans have one third fewer close friends and confidants than two decades ago, and the number of people who have none has more than doubled.”

Are Americans more disconnected now than they were twenty years ago? Have they retreated into their selves? (or their cells? (or their cell ph.s?)) Has the connection dwindled?

Probably.

We know people can and do form intense and authentic emotional bonds over digital media like IRC, the web and World of Warcrack. Have confidants moved to a “virtual” category that didn’t have a bubble on the General Social Survey?

Probably.

While the data showed a drop in confidants who are friends or who are family members, there was a far greater drop-off in friends.

While close friendships are dwindling — or is it consolidating? — nuclear familial bonds are strengthening. Networks of trust and kinship have grown more sparse.

What are the ramifications of such dramatic social change? Bradley Heinz suggests

We’re becoming more self-referential by relying more on family. In our growing isolation, I see a genetic analogy: our waning social exposure is like inbreeding…

In other words, fewer social contacts equal a reduced mutation rate of family belief and value systems. Children more closely resemble their parents sociologically. Back into the family fold.

But a corresponding shift to confidants distributed over the internet would presumably raise the mutation rate through globally expanded social exposure. Children raised from birth with internet access.

So where do you fall? Who and where are your confidants?