Late to this party but your observation is spot on! So many layers to this issue though...I've been noticing this problem more and more often recently: people in their late twenties/early thirties are lonely and have very few friends. Perhaps it's only limited to me, my girlfriend, and some people I know so I wanted to post this thread and figure this out. Here are a few thoughts to offer more detail:
What are your thoughts, experiences, suggestions, whatever else is on your mind?
- In my hometown, I have 0 friends with whom I meet up regularly. I had one friend until last year when his son was born. He had been telling me all the time that nothing would change when he would become a father (I never believed him) but now we talk only online. I think I saw him last time over six months ago. Before, we used to meet at least 2-3 times a week. My other friends who live in the same city have gone in a different direction in life and we don't really mesh that well anymore. We sometimes meet but usually I'm okay with just one meeting per 3 months or so.
- My other friends are almost exclusively virtual. We talk online but we rarely meet (1-2 times a year) or never. It's still good to be able to talk online but it's not the same as doing fun stuff together regularly and being spontaneous (impossible since they all live between 2-5 hours by car from where I live).
- Almost all our friends/people we know lack initiative. If I organize something, they will join but by themselves they almost never set up anything. This makes me feel that they don't really care much about the relationship. So in return, I don't put in that much effort anymore.
- In the case of my girlfriend, her friends have so little time that their lives are limited to work, home (with their partner), and their dogs. And we're talking about young people who supposedly should enjoy their youth.
- As sad as it is, unless I'm traveling or learning something new with a coach, this forum is usually the main way I interact with strangers. I do enjoy this but like I said above, I'd like to have some deep friendships with people I trust that share my values and are available to do fun stuff together. As it is now, whatever new things I do, I just hire a coach and sometimes he or she becomes my sort of friend.
- Speaking of traveling, I've found that it's usually way easier to find like-minded people when visiting places that interest us and match our values. But these relationships have the same problem: they're almost exclusively virtual. So in the end it's nice when you're there but it sort of dies when you're not there (which is kind of understandable if it's a new relationship).
- Curiously, we often see people way older than we are who enjoy rich social lives. Heck, I think that my parents may actually have more friends and a richer social life than I do even though they live in the countryside and rarely leave their homes lol.
Societal shifts in geographical moving patterns and work patterns, more importance put on online interactions and hyperrealities than ever before, higher divorce rates than previous decades (and the associated losses of relationships that go along with divorce), more generalized anxiety in the population than ever before, younger generations that lack some of the social skills of their predecessors, etc.
So. Many. Layers.
And now add COVID fears into the mix and real life face to face interactions now carry a health risk factor that wasn't there before.
It's really a shame too because in my field (relationship therapy) we see more and more anti-social behaviors and less relationship building, prosocial behaviors. The things that build not just strong relationships at the micro level but strong communities at large..
For example, "ghosting" is often the preferred solution when there are problems in a relationship now (both dating and friendships) as opposed to facing the discomfort of working through the issue face to face (or even text to text).
So yes, completely agreed with your observation here. The larger consequences of this trend... the lack of close relationships, are yet to be seen but I hear this exact issue from 20s and 30s folks all the time, and deal with it myself.
Perhaps at some point we'll begin placing high importance on relationships again as a society and us younger generations will do more to cultivate our friendships and build "framily" where we live. Much easier to build and maintain them in your immediate community than trying to keep those relationships alive via technology when they're probably already on life support as it is.
Lessons from the world's "blue zones" come to mind here.
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