Strangers Next Door: The Decline of Neighborhood Socializing and the Class Divide in Belonging

 

• Since 2012, the percentage of young adults who talk to their neighbors at least a few times per week dropped from 51 percent to 25 percent. Among seniors, the decline was only seven points (63 percent to 56 percent).
• Compared with Americans without a degree, college-educated Americans are more likely to have worked with their neighbors to improve a condition in their community (46 percent vs. 34 percent), spent a social evening with a neighbor (58 percent vs. 46 percent), and exchanged texts or emails with a neighbor (65 percent vs. 45 percent).
• Forty-nine percent of Americans who attend religious services weekly talk to their neighbors regularly, compared with only 31 percent of Americans who never attend religious services.

Executive Summary

The 2025 American Neighbor Survey explores the various ways in which Americans are—and are not—interacting with the people in their immediate communities. In the past decade, the frequency of neighborly interactions has plummeted. This withdrawal has been particularly prevalent among young adults, while seniors have remained more consistently in touch with their neighbors. College-educated Americans also experience stronger neighborhood ties. Compared with Americans who have a high school degree or less, college graduates are more trusting of their neighbors, socialize with them more frequently, and are quicker to rely on them for help in times of need. The report also examines the association between attending religious services and the health of neighborhood ties, finding that more frequent attendees are more engaged neighbors.

Introduction

As Americans spend more of their time online, the neighborhood—once a primary physical location for real-world socialization—is playing less of a central role than ever before. Since the pandemic increased opportunities for remote work and flexible schedules, social interactions among neighbors have fallen. Whether because of social media distractions, travel sports commitments, or the rising use of freelance service providers like Taskrabbit, Americans rely far less on close neighbors and venture out less often into their communities. As Marc Dunkelman contends in The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community, less routine interaction with neighbors and others in the “middle ring” of social connections allows us far fewer opportunities to practice constructive debate.1

Neighborhoods vary in size, shape, and character, but one aspect that affects degrees of interpersonal engagement is the educational and class background of the people who live there. Americans with college degrees have a considerable advantage in maintaining close neighborhood connections. College graduates are more trusting of their neighbors—and more likely to socialize with them and work together to solve community problems. Americans with college degrees also express more comfort with leaning on their neighbors for support. For instance, most parents with a college degree say they would feel comfortable asking a neighbor to watch their children in an emergency, while fewer than four in 10 parents without a degree say the same.

It’s not only a class divide. The new American Neighbor Survey reveals evidence of a religious gap as well. Those who attend religious services frequently are much more socially active in their neighborhoods than are those who seldom or never participate in religious services. Americans who regularly attend religious services have stronger social connections with their neighbors and are more inclined to work with them to address community problems and concerns. Religious Americans interact with their communities differently, and their views about what it means to be a good neighbor are distinct. They are more likely to believe that good neighbors should seek opportunities to help those who live around them, even if their neighbors did not ask for help.

The American neighborhood was once a primary place for socialization. It included the critical social and civic infrastructure that educated new generations, taught them values, and provided a testing ground for their emerging sense of themselves and the wider world they were joining. The neighborhood is still important, but it occupies a less central place than it once did. Young adults have experienced one of the most rapid declines in neighborly interaction—only one in four say they talk with their neighbors regularly, a drop of more than half in just over a decade.

[MORE]

https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/strangers-next-door-the-decline-of-neighborhood-socializing-and-the-class-divide-in-belonging/