The Multimillion-Dollar Friendship Industry Has a Big Flaw
If you're a lonely adult in an American city, please know that people are trying very hard to help you. A few examples: The organization Project Gather hosts food-centered hangouts—potlucks, bake sales, mushroom foraging—across the country. The company Timeleft, operating in more than 300 cities, matches groups of five strangers for dinner every Wednesday. Belong Center offers 'Belong Circles,' 90-minute gatherings led by 'trained community architects.' Block Party USA seems to, um—advocate for the concept of block parties?
Ventures such as these make up a growing friendship industry, and they claim a lofty goal: Not only do they want to get people off their phone and out of the house; they want nothing less than to cure Americans of alienation. 'Eating with others can bring joy, build interpersonal connections, and ultimately help solve the loneliness epidemic in the U.S.,' Project Gather declares. Block Party USA considers itself an 'actionable cure for our country's loneliness, social isolation, divisiveness, and the youth mental health crisis.' Ambitious! But I have some notes.
First, it must be said: Research doesn't back up the idea that America is experiencing a loneliness epidemic, or even that overall loneliness rates are worse now than they've generally been throughout history.
Of course, plenty of people do report feeling lonely—particularly young adults, a group that may actually be lonelier than they used to be. And many of these endeavors explicitly or implicitly target Gen Z, a cohort that does seem to struggle with interpersonal trust and vulnerability, and therefore could probably use some help connecting. If only it were as easy as getting them in the same room.
[Read: The myth of a loneliness epidemic]
Most of these start-ups appear to rely on a common assumption: Loneliness results from a lack of friends, and to make new friends, one should meet new people. But we don't fully know what makes a person more or less lonely. Loneliness and time spent alone don't seem to be closely correlated; different people crave different amounts of socializing, and not all socializing is equally fulfilling. When researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education surveyed 1,500 American adults about loneliness, they found that people cited a number of struggles, not all clearly related to a friend shortage: 65 percent of those who were lonely said they felt existentially alone, separate from others or the world; 60 percent said their insecurity or mental health had made connection more difficult; 57 percent said they couldn't share their true self. Other studies suggest that very few people have no friends, and that the average number of friends people have has remained fairly stable over time.
The problem with relationships is often one of quality rather than quantity. One firm believer in this principle is Shasta Nelson, who writes about friendship and hosts a podcast called Frientimacy. The title is a nod to what she believes many people are hungry for: not friends, per se, but real intimacy with those friends. 'We don't need to meet more people,' she told me. 'We need to feel more met by the people we already know.'
Achieving frientimacy, she argues, requires three things: consistency, positivity, and vulnerability. The friendship industry tends to start and end with mere presence: You have to show up. But a single paint-and-sip does not a best friend make. Jeffrey A. Hall, a University of Kansas communication professor, has found in his work that going from strangers to casual friends typically takes 40 to 60 hours spent together; moving to actual friends takes 80 to 100 hours, and forming a good friendship tends to take about 200 hours altogether. Ideally, a friendship-event attendee knows that if they meet someone they like, they should reach out again. What about the time after that—and after that? Without another shared context or network to put them in regular proximity, consistency is difficult to attain.
[Read: The six forces that fuel friendship]
American culture has few models for how early friendship development works, Nelson told me. People tend to understand that after a good first date, they need to schedule the next meetup—soon, or they'll lose momentum. With platonic prospects, though, many people don't know how to put in the work. 'One of the big myths,' she said, is 'that we just have to meet the right person. We just need to keep being in the room, and eventually we'll find our best friend.' Instead of seeking more and more people, hoping for a spark, maybe you're better off working on the friendships that you already have—you know, the ones you're neglecting while playing badminton with strangers.
This is where positivity, another one of Nelson's pillars, comes in: the measure of how good a given friendship is making you feel. It's actually the key to consistency, because you won't be motivated to clear space in a hectic schedule—to pay the babysitter, to do the commute—if you didn't leave the last hang feeling seen. Nelson hears a lot of complaints about consistency being the hardest node of the triad to achieve, but for years now, she's been asking participants to assess their own strength in each of the three areas—and she's found that positivity is the area in which participants perform most poorly. So many people, she observed, are overwhelmed and burned out; they might show up and cross 'friend time' off their list without really giving those friends their full attention. Or they're so nervous and afraid of rejection that they focus on themselves while socializing, not on how to make others feel valued. And if they're too guarded to really open up—to achieve the third pillar, vulnerability—how can they expect the other person to do so either?
Hypothetically, an anti-loneliness start-up could design meetups with these principles in mind: supporting the slow build of connection over time; encouraging warmth, sharing, and vocal affirmation. Nelson herself ran a 'friendship accelerator' program back in 2008, in which she matched participants into small groups and had them commit to 10 full weeks of structured gatherings. Each one ended with everyone in a circle, telling the person on their right one thing they appreciated about them. At least one of those groups, she told me, is still close. At the same time, she knows that even the most perfectly curated series of get-togethers isn't likely to fix anyone's social life. She compared it to working out: You don't really start to feel the benefits until you've stuck with it enough to get in shape. 'We have to see our social health not just as an event here and there, but like a lifestyle,' she told me, 'that we are training for and getting stronger in.'
[Read: Americans are hoarding their friends]
The loneliness industrial complex is unlikely to sustain a lifetime of intentional friendship. But further, it isn't equipped to address the structural issues plaguing many lonely people—especially young adults. Hosting social events won't make rent any cheaper or higher education more affordable, which might allow more young people to live near friends rather than moving back in with their parents. It won't cut down on people's working hours so they can spend more time with loved ones. It won't fix the mental-health-treatment gap, which exists because providers tend to focus on children and adolescents or end up treating middle-aged and older adults, leaving young adults underserved. It won't transform the architecture of cities—build larger housing units, say, so people can host groups; improve public transportation so they can easily reach friends; open new 'third places,' public areas where people can socialize for free.
Imperfect measures are better than none. Still: A whole lot of resources—whether from investors or individual donors or pro bono efforts—are being dumped into the friendship industry. TimeLeft, backed by venture capital, has raised more than $2 million since 2020; according to a story in New York magazine earlier this year, Belong Center has gathered at least $1,750,000. Hinge's 'One More Hour' initiative is investing $1 million in existing social clubs—some of which host events, such as 'reading parties,' that sound highly likely to be one-off experiences.
And although some of these meetups are free to attendees, others require entry fees or memberships. Take the Brooklyn-based Sprout Society's upcoming 'Together We Dink': A Pickleball Experience event: A ticket that includes playing, food, and drinks costs $250. Across the nation, people yearning for some kind of community are really trying—they're making time, getting dressed up, shelling out—all for a highly imperfect solution. At best, these enterprises offer helpful venues for meeting interesting people, whether or not you'll be forever friends or even have much in common. At worst, they're expensive distractions, offering a false promise of shiny new connections at the expense of old pals—the ones who have been there all along.
Article originally published at The Atlantic
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