how to avoid the friendship trap

post-pandemic loneliness is universal

Picture this: you want to see an old friend from your UChicago days, so you text them something along the lines of “Let’s get a beer soon!” and wait for a reply. They eventually respond, and you agree to meet at Dalva, a cocktail bar you like, in two weeks. You forget about it for a few days. The day comes, and you’re exhausted from fighting Microsoft Excel all day. You’re really not in the mood for a $20 mezcal cocktail. You suggest postponing drinks and they immediately agree. No one suggests a new date or time. They disappear into the space-time fabric of your brain, never to be seen again. 

What killed the friendship?

Tons of outlets, from Vox to the New Yorker to the Wall Street Journal to WBUR to Parade to the BBC (to name a few) have described some recent decline in close friendship, and most have pinned it to either post-pandemic culture or the prominence of social media. I saw one Tiktoker pin it on urbanism, arguing people live too far apart. Differing slightly in cause, they call out the same thing: friendship feels harder now.

The writing on this subject I’ve found most interesting is Rosie Spinks’ “The Friendship Problem,” which argues that informal friendships have died in part due to the rise of social media and the desire to optimize our lives. This loss of this informal friendship gives rise to the formal friendship – think painstakingly planning hangouts weeks in advance and trying to respect each others’ busy lives (but then fundamentally just contributing to it). I also wonder if the formal friendship, and the rules and limits of the “nice afterwork dinner” that come along with it, tend to confine the conversation to “work niceties” and politely silly “what-I-did-last-weekend”s. You leave the dinner, or the drinks, or the farmer’s market, and feel more satisfied than happy – like you’ve crossed out an obligation. 

Rosie Spinks finds, sort of in the vein of what I’ve published before, that this is linked to our cultural obsession with making our lives easier, which really isn’t always making them better:

“Myself and people my age have been trained under the illusion that we can effectively eliminate any and all friction from our lives. We can work from home, Amazon prime everything we need, swipe through a limitless array of mediocre dates, text our therapist, and have a person go to the grocery store for us when we don’t feel like it, all while consuming an endless stream of entertainment options that we’ll scarcely remember the name of two weeks in the future.”

This kind of living results in some stark outcomes. Rosie quotes Esther Perel, a Belgian-American psychotherapist who studies human relationships:  “Modern loneliness masks itself as hyper connectivity. And so people have easily 1000 virtual friends, but no one they can ask to feed their cat.” 

You might think, Whatever, not everyone has cats. But being human means you have needs – we are social animals, and basically no human can function without the herd. The result of isolating yourself from said herd, as Rosie quotes Perel, is “social atrophy.” We may keep our close college friends close, but despite the age of hyperconnection, we fail to expand to new environments. 

No more informal new friends

It may have started in the 1950s according to Bowling Alone, but atomization has continued in new and exciting ways in the age of social media. It’s gotten a lot harder, if not almost impossible, to forge new, informal friendships in real life from environments with potential friction: a book club, a friend’s house party, a planning meeting, a neighborhood bar. Plus, many of these clubbier social environments now only exist in structured online communities or cease to exist at all. 

The public places where we now find ourselves most frequently – the bus stop, the grocery store, the thrift store – feature everyone (or at least those under 40) wearing headphones. You’d have to commit a heinous social offense, shouting over the headphones, just to compliment someone’s shoes. Alternatively, you’d have to drop the headphones, trade listening to your buddies on Chapo Trap House for listening to what’s going on in the real world, and that means you wouldn’t be able to cross listening the new Chapo episode off your to-do list today.

These kinds of conversations and places used to give way to informal friendships. It’s great to walk into a cafe and the barista smiles at you and starts your regular drink, or hear that your scarf looks pretty cool. Not only are these experiences comforting, they serve as a bridge to other people and ideas and things happening in the real world, and they can often deepen into real, close friendships. But they’re rare now. And without place-based relationships, you can easily find yourself place-less.

Old friends get formal

The friend who you once texted “Dining hall in 30 minutes?” is now the friend you make a two-week-out reservation at a hot new restaurant called Zest., where you can spend $55 (pre-tax and 12% “service fee” which doesn’t count as tip) on an undercooked chicken thigh and glass of wine from a bottle that cost less than the glass you’re holding, and then talk about work the whole time.

To the hip-young-and-fun city dweller, social environments are easily influenced by this new world of Eater and The New York Times Best Restaurants and Tiktok recommendations and Michelin’s Bib Gourmand. Why would you meet at the neighborhood restaurant, a mere 3.2-stars on Google Maps, when you could go somewhere actually good? This puts you into a cycle of constantly going to new places, ordering new food, gaining fresh backdrops. Why wouldn’t you? You pay an arm and a leg to live in a Global City, so you want the best for yourself, and you want to have been to the Hot New Place. But this almost certainly means weeks-out reservations, expensive food, zero familiarity with the staff or the location, and frequently stilted, formal conversation. 

It’s not an easy playing field. The magic of deepening existing friendships is subject to the challenging logistics of modern life. You’re really, really busy. You’re in a competitive job and stuff keeps costing more. Plus, social media has challenged you to be everything at once. Watch a few TikToks or reels and suddenly your life could be so much easier and yummier if you could make this 10-Minute Easy Sichuan Noodle Recipe. Or maybe the Good Life is actually embodied in the girls who film themselves doing Pilates every morning at 6am (probably not though, you say as your $107/month gym membership goes largely untouched). You’re learning new hobbies: bouldering and how to tell the good Trader Joe’s wine from the bad. All the life skills, all the bridges to the Good Life are in the 5.8 inch box in your hand. Who the hell has time to meet a distant friend?

The “social” parts of social media aren’t much better. Sure, you can see many of your friends there, basically every night, while you scroll and promise yourself that you’ll go to bed soon. But if you’re anything like me, and the majority of people, it’s a brainless scroll – that leaves you safe to not push to hang out with people. Marissa’s already had dinner tonight, she doesn’t need me texting her. Pete is doing fine, no need for me to barge in. This feels totally comfortable until you realize no Instagram story is going to bring you soup when you’re sick, or comfort you when your grandparents have passed away.

It feels like there’s this stark trade-off: make sterile formal plans and/or watch the friend present themselves on social media in this all-too-common also-sterile way. In the latter, you’re weirdly compelled to watch the relationship atrophy over real time — you watch them post people and experiences and things you know nothing about. (e.g., the classic “Stephen has a girlfriend now?” moment) And then what can you do but play the least common denominator — watch the show and scroll on. No need to text Stephen about the girlfriend when he can see you’ve viewed his Insta story.

Speaking anecdotally and with none of the statistics linked in articles linked above, this all seems pretty fun and easy in the short term, but totally useless in the long term.

How can you change it?

Take stock of your closest friends

Ask yourself: who are you closest to, and how much time do you spend with them? In today’s hyper-mobile society, it’s normal if you only see your best friend once a year, but then you have to remember to call them.

Orient social media towards fun, not representation

Social media is for playing with, screwing around, and having fun. If you see it as “upkeep” or a formal means to display the events of your life, it’s a stressor more than it is an opportunity for self-expression. 

Be open to others

This post-pandemic environment tells you to never talk to the cool guy at the vinyl store or invite a neighbor to a backyard party. But if you don’t fight against that feeling, you’ll never grow your world.

Take initiative in bold ways

No one wants to be overbearing and make too many plans, but feeling lonely is worse. Actually call your friends who don’t live in town. Make the leap and invite people over. Scheme something silly. Order pizza if you don’t want to deal with cooking. (Each of my Friday night Arizmendi pizza orders is a decision I’ll never regret.).

Plan directly, sincerely

This one is harder than it looks. Everyone flakes these days and it sucks. My friend Quinn, a plans communication thought leader, makes a point to cancel immediately when he can’t make it and commit immediately when he can. Real commitment makes organizing hangouts 100% easier for everyone involved. Seriously, try it.

Grow comfortable with rejection

People grow older and into and out of groups. It’s natural and, luckily, has nothing to do with you. Some of your friends have just hit different milestones at different times - they moved to the South Bay, they got a pet iguana, whatever. You can safely move on, knowing it’s not about you.

Ask real questions

Sure, everyone loves a “chill” friendship, but there’s a certain magic to recognizing the closeness you have with someone else, and tossing out an unexpectedly deep, or at least unexpected, question. For example, in the last year I’ve learned that not all men in San Francisco draw their inspiration from Marcus Aurelius.

You’re not too old for a friend group