A survey found that 42% of respondents say they are "less sociable" than they were in 2019, and 37% said their friends are less sociable now. Another survey found that just 43% say they socialize with friends in person on a daily or weekly basis, 19% said they hang out with friends in person less than once a month, and 16% said they never do. And while we can blame the pandemic for some of this, Robert D. Putnam, a retired Harvard professor author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, says the decline in socialization was happening long before that. And hanging out with friends at your local bar is also "becoming a thing of the past," according to Putnam, with the frequency of Americans (both married and single) going out to bars declining 40% to 50% over the 20 years.