Americans are saying 28% fewer words to each other and 75% of the young dont talk to their neighbors blame Silicon Valley

In his 1919 poem “The Unknown Friends,” American poet Edgar Guest wrote that “each one of us has friends that he / Has yet to meet and really know.”But what happens when Americans no longer want to meet and really know each other? And when tech keeps them from doing so?The data tell us that Americans are quite literally speaking to each other less.A March 2026 study demonstrated that the number of words the average person uttered fell by 28% between 2005 and 2019.

That’s a drop of about 330 spoken words a day, or 120,000 over the course of a year.Silicon Valley is unworried.If anything, they’d like to see those numbers come down even more.

In July, tech startup Friend launched a new iteration of its controversial AI necklace, designed to talk back to lonely users.Americans will be talking, but not to other humans.

This is continuation of existing trends.In 2019, research out of Britain showed that digital conversation between Britons outpaced in-person communication.Then COVID came along.

Isolation and loneliness got a lot worse.A recent survey discovered that almost 10% of all Gen Zers say they had zero face-to-face interaction in their daily life.A 2025 American Enterprise Institute survey revealed that only 40% of Americans report talking to their neighbors regularly (at least a few times a week), down from 59% in 2012.

The drop is most pronounced among young adults (18-29): in 2012, 51% reported social interaction with their neighbors at least a few times a week.By 2025, that number had dropped to 25%.On top of that, data from the U.S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the average time spent socializing per day has fallen from 41 to 35 minutes in the last 10 years.That trend, though sharpest in young adults, is evident in every generation. What’s driving these trends? It’s not just one thing.But it’s hard to identify any culprit guiltier than our technology habits.

Electronic messaging is now our default way to communicate.Eve...