Most socially connected counties in America
In today's digital age, social media platforms enable people to bridge geographic distances and connect with their friends, family, and community, no matter where they are. According to a 2022 Gallup and Meta study, at least 1 in 3 people across seven countries, including the U.S., said they used social media to interact with others at least once a day in the past week.
While social media has its drawbacks—such as exacerbating attention issues or fostering a problematic comparison culture—it remains a vital tool for helping people stay connected.
A majority of grade 3 to 12 students said social media helped them develop relationships, learn social skills, and make a positive impact in their community, according to a 2024 report from The Social Institute.
Spokeo compiled a ranking of 50 pairs of the most socially connected counties in America using 2021 data from Facebook. County pairs were ranked by their social connectedness index, which measures the relative probability that two individuals across two locations are friends with each other on Facebook. The social connectedness index is a scaled value up to a billion. Larger indexes indicate a greater share of Facebook friends between county pairs.
Some county pairs in the top 50 share similarities like population size, geographic proximity, or demographic composition. For example, the second-ranked pair of Faulkner and Saline County in Arkansas both have similar population sizes, age and racial distributions, and per capita incomes, according to Census data.
For this ranking, only nonneighboring counties with populations over 100,000 were considered, based on the 2023 Census estimates. Connecticut was excluded from the analysis because the Facebook data predates the Census' shift to reporting planning regions instead of counties.
