With National Friendship Day approaching on Sunday, Aug. 2, you might think it would be a melancholy one, given the loneliness epidemic gripping the nation. Recent research from Colorado State University has found that how people spend time with friends and family is changing — but people are not necessarily lonelier. Natalie Pennington, an associate professor in CSU’s Department of Communication Studies, is part of the American Friendship Project. The results are the latest in a series of findings in the American Friendship Project, which Pennington and her colleagues have been conducting for several years. “My read on the data is people are subbing a night out with friends for a night in with family,” Hall said.