The Decibel - How to make friends as an adult

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

It’s hard making friends as an adult. Time to build new relationships becomes scarce. And despite many ways to keep in contact, people are lonelier than ever – new data from Statistics Canada shows that 47 per cent of Canadians feel lonely always, often, or some of the time.Zosia Bielski is a national reporter for the Globe and Mail whose work often examines relationships. She’s on the show to talk about how adults seeking friends are turning to apps and speed dating events to make platonic connections.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Your palms get a bit sweaty. You're worried you'll say the wrong thing. What if they don't like you? What if you don't like them? Those are all feelings we typically associate with trying to find a romantic partner. But we're not talking about dating today. Okay, so Zosia, before we start talking, I wanted to kind of try out one of these apps. And since I'm going on mat leave for loose soon, I kind of thought I would be very fitting to use this app called Peanut. And Peanut is basically for women seeking friends at various stages of life.

Zosia Bielski is a national reporter for The Globe and Mail. She's on the show to talk about a new trend that's all about making friends. All right, swipe up to wave, swipe down to skip. All right, I already have a person here, but I won't say names because of privacy reasons, but I have a photo here. Oh my goodness, this is a potential friend. Potential friend. Apps are getting traction for those looking to make platonic connections. And so I guess it's very similar to Tinder, where you're swiping instead of right and left, you're going up and down. Did you match? I matched with actually an ad.

Lego Duplo waved at you too. No real matches for me yet. But friendship apps are becoming more common. Because making friends as an adult is hard. I kind of feel a little bit awkward about it because it's so interesting to think about making friends this way. But yeah, I guess it's kind of the trend. So a lot of these apps sort of have echoes of dating apps where sort of taking the same infrastructure, but hopefully you're not picking friends based on their appearance, but, you know, sort of

based on those common interests and whatever you've written that profile. Hopefully it's honest. Today on the show, we look at the new ways people are trying to make friends and how this changes the way we connect with each other. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Zosia, thanks so much for being here today. Thank you for having me. So there are some new tools available to help people find friends, and we were just trying one of them, the Peanut app.

And these tools really do remind me of trying to find a romantic partner as well. So can you just tell me about some of these apps and what they're all about? Absolutely. So there are apps for pretty much like every type of friend under the stun. You know, you've got Atleto for sporty types, you've got Meetup, which is sort of the granddaddy of these friendship apps, really based upon common interests and hobbies, whether that's knitting or sushi making. Peanut, as you said, is for women at various stages, like in their reproductive health. Let me know or LMK is you can find individual friends or you can find a clique. So they'll actually like find a compatible group of

people for you. And for example, there's another one called Yubo, which will actually do a video chat feature. So you can make sure you're not being catfished if that's a concern for you. So a lot of them involve a bit of that swiping and a little bit of that verification. So they're definitely borrowing from dating apps in terms of the infrastructure. Yeah, I'm actually surprised to learn there's so many of them, actually. But you go into that list there, that's quite a few. And I certainly haven't even covered off all of them. So you can get into some real like specificity. And you actually spoke to a founder of one, one of them called Kind. How does that

one work? So Kind is from a Toronto based founder and CEO, Laura Whitney Snyderman. And she's trying something interesting out where she's actively asking people to set out exactly what they're willing to exchange, whether it's skills, knowledge, or time, and exactly what they want back. And while that kind of sounds transactional, Laura explained that what she's trying to kind of breed in people is this idea of reciprocity and give and take, and kind of give people a motivator to actually meet up in the real world. So I think my favorite one that I sort of scanned through was a guy who was offering strength training in exchange for piano lessons, and not just any piano lessons, but jazz piano lessons. So very, very specific. I don't know

if he had any luck, but it's just one other, you know, like a little bit of a wrinkle in the market. Okay, so what are the other ways that people are looking to find new friends? Because it's not just apps or other kind of venues that people are doing to try to find friends. Absolutely. And again, we have these holdovers from the dating sphere. So we've got platonic speed dating. So there's speed dating events strictly meant for platonic relationships and friendships. One of the two that I profiled, one was sort of at a public library, sparsely attended, but still, you know, really for people new to the neighborhood in a smaller town. And the other that I looked at was The Village, which is a yoga studio for women of color.

And they have sort of monthly meetups where they offer people conversation cards that are supposed to sort of take you beyond corporate networking and kind of career talk. So they sort of probe people to go a little beyond the surface and to sort of challenge them to sort of be a little bit more vulnerable and open. Another one that came up was Amiche. This guy got in contact with me after our story ran. So that's like a dinner club. There's sort of a series of salons and people share food. I think that's another sort of intuitive way of meeting. Talking over food, that definitely makes sense. The reason why we have these apps and then these different ways of meeting friends is because it is a lot harder to make friends as an adult. And I kind of wanted to ask you, Zosia, how have you noticed your platonic relationships changing as an adult? Well, certainly, like a lot of people, you sort of disappear into your primary relationship.

We've been renovating a lot, you know, that domesticity, you sort of like retreat into your little world career. And I think certainly your world gets smaller unless you sort of make an active effort to meet. And in my case, a couple of friends moved away during the pandemic because Toronto is obviously stupidly expensive and a few other people are caregiving. So a lot of my closest relationships became like texting relationships. And I've learned that I'm very bad at that. So I will leave those texts lingering and hanging and then rack myself, you know, with guilt and sort of seek forgiveness. And of course, my friends don't care. But I really don't do well with that asynchronous texting. Like, you know, you're never doing it at the same time. It's rare that you are. You're kind of responding in your own time. And as a friend of mine put it,

she just said, you're an in-person person, you know, and that kind of gave me it out. But that's the way it's been shape-shifting lately. I totally relate with you when it comes to texting. I do the same thing where you're trying to think of the best message. And then also I'll leave it. Then I sometimes forget about it. And it's just like that guilt, you know, so I totally relate with that. It doesn't work. And I actually was thinking about the last time I have this really vivid memory of making

a friend as an adult. And it was when I was working at the CBC. And I remember a friend of mine, I was working this early, early shift, 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. So who do you talk to after that, other than people that you work with that are working in these crazy hours? And a friend said, let's hang out after work. And she came over to my house with this like giant watermelon. And I just have this memory of this is how we became friends.

But, you know, you do have to put yourself out there. It's not easy to make friends as you're older. And I just wanted to ask you, because I think it's fair to say that as kids and even young adults, it is a lot easier to make friends. So why is it so hard when you get older? Well, I mean, yeah, think back to your school years, like the friendships are built in. You're seeing the same people in class for eight hours a day. you are hanging out at lunch, then you move into your university years, you're in a dorm, you know, people live across the hall from you, you're grabbing food together, maybe you're living in an apartment with roommates, you're spending all out into our career hunt. You've got to get serious and adult responsibilities come in. And then we sort of hive off into, again, primary romantic relationships. And we do undervalue our friendships.

And, you know, kids come along, you sort of retreat further. These are the stages of life. And this is often what happens unless you make a real concerted effort to maintain and be persistent with those friendships. Is there something to be said about the moment that we're in as well? Like I'm thinking about, you know, a lot of our time when it comes to free time is spent online. And have we lost something in terms of community when it comes to, I guess, I don't know, where we used to meet? Yeah, there's a lot of talk about third places, Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone,

that was sort of a preeminent text, basically the way we've lost our community spaces, whether it's church organizations or civic organizations, labor unions, a lot of those traditional ways of meeting have maybe gone out the window. So I think we content ourselves that swiping through our social media is sort of a replacement for that, but it obviously isn't. For sure. I also think about sometimes like I have these friendships on my Instagram, right? Some people I haven't seen for years and I talk to them quite a bit online, but you're not seeing that person. So it's like this pseudo friendship that's happening. And you have to question like how much vulnerability is there in those exchanges.

And one of the things that Ms. Neiderman talked to me about, the kin founder, was mutual vulnerability, like showing people who we really are and having them accept us as we are. Much of that doesn't really happen on social media. How has the pandemic affected our friendship relationships? Myriad ways. So, I mean, the pandemic absolutely, completely overhauled our friendship. So, you know, for starters, we were holed up for months at a time in lockdown, our worlds shrank, it was, you know, a crisis moment. So we obviously put a lot on our partners to sort of be our everything for better and for worse, which is a lot of pressure to put on your partner. But yeah, we retreated further into those domestic spheres. I think a lot of people became closer with family in many cases, but our world shrank. And at the same time, we had sort of a mass exodus of people leaving cities, moving to smaller cities or towns or moving back to their hometowns. The other thing that experts who sort of study our social relationships found was that we

were sort of purging our surface level relationships. We also lost something called our other significant others. So maybe that's the barista you talk to every day or the crosswalk guy, or your bus driver, those people that kind of float in and out of our lives that, you know, you might just have casual conversations with that all went out the window. And then of course, we had, you know, the rise of work from home and online schooling for kids. So it's just scattershot, like it's so many after effects. You mentioned how we put a lot in our relationships, like our partners, and with so many other responsibilities, why do we need friendships in adulthood? I always think of it as like not putting all of your eggs in one basket, you know, into your primary relationship.

First of all, it's like immense pressure to put on one person. But also like we do need a wider safety net. And there's a ton of research about the benefits of friendship, even physiological benefits. But also just having different perspectives, you know, different opinions, different life experiences. Yeah. And there are kind of health benefits too, right also just having different perspectives, different opinions, different life experiences. Yeah. And there are kind of health benefits too, right? To having friends? Yeah. So we hear a lot about social isolation, acute social isolation being sort of as bad as smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day. So the link there is researchers have found when you're completely socially isolated, chronic stress goes up, your sleep patterns are disrupted, dissatisfaction with life, anxiety, and that in turn, you know, leads to cardiovascular effects. There are dementia links. So that's sort of the through line. And I should stress that this is not about, you know, people who live alone, because many people are very content living alone. But this is something different.

This is the feeling of social isolation. So there are serious consequences to sort of prolonged chronic isolation. We'll be right back. So let's get back to these new tools. It sounds like they can definitely get you out there meeting new people. But what does it take to actually translate that into a real friendship? Some of the founders of these tools that I spoke to said, you know, we're a piece of technology, like it still takes the human to make the effort to get out there. So it's one thing to sort of join a speed dating event or get on one of these apps. All of that is already like overcoming a barrier and then kind of acknowledging that you are looking for

more people in your life. But one of the things some critics have talked about is, you know, when you're replicating that dating app style of swiping, it can become a superficial exercise. And sometimes what they're seeing is a little bit of ghosting again, where people don't follow through. All of those hangovers from dating apps, you know, can happen in this sphere too. So I think what some of these communities are doing, they will have a blog or a zine that sort of gets at really the importance of persistence and maintenance and, you know, offering people icebreaker questions or tips on what to do together in their city. I mean, it all sort of feels mechanical, but they are trying to nudge people into, you know,

just being better at this. You know, our colleague Dave McGinn wrote a piece about a few years ago, actually, about male friendships. And one of the things I picked out of that was that a researcher said it takes about 200 hours to build close friendships. I just found that really interesting. Yeah, like that's investment. And you think about sort of how self-obsessed we are, whether it's our careers or our families or homes, and that's investment. Are there differences in the ways that men and women form and maintain platonic relationships? I think it's clear that there are. So a lot of these apps and events really will cater strictly to women. And a few of the people I spoke to weren't completely convinced that this would

translate so well to men. And what they talked about is sort of a stigma that sort of men need an alibi to hang out and they might not be as prone to say straight up, I want more friends, I'm here for platonic friendship. So one of the things researchers talk about is the way that men befriend each other through side by side activities. So that could be gaming, that could be sports, that could be sitting at the bar, going on a road trip, literally shoulder to shoulder activities. Whereas women, I think, are much more comfortable in general, sort of sitting across the table from each other and being vulnerable and openly expressing, you know, desire to try some of these new tools.

That's so interesting. So the side by side is kind of like, it's not as intimate, I guess, right? Versus the face to face when you're actually sharing. You don't have to look each other in the eye. Yeah, that's so interesting. So what have you heard from people who attended these events? Like what was their experience like? You know, I think there was definitely like some trepidation because you are putting yourself out there

as much as you would, you know, with a date. But they'd come to a point where they sort of had nothing to lose. So I spoke with Shara Singh, who is 30, and she attended one of these speed dating events at the yoga studio in Toronto. I would say that actually post-COVID, I've kind of been on this mission to find friends in adulthood, particularly female friendships. I just found that you would watch, you would watch like Sex and the City or like shows on TV and like everybody has their girl gang. And I just felt like I was missing that in life, honestly. And she was seated with a group of other women, you know, late 20s to early 30s. And they remain friends to this day. And it's over a year later. And it's sort of quite serendipitous that the people you get seated with at an event like that, they actually clicked.

So they were sort of given these cards that sort of ask you questions all women can go on about forever, right? Like, how do you eke out time for yourself? How do you push back on sort of the demands around you? How do you prioritize yourself? And so those questions kind of led them to talk about their families, their lives. They all realized they were the daughters of immigrants and, you know, they were very keenly aware of what the expectations were around caregiving and aging and their anxieties around that. So it kind of got deep with them pretty quickly. And then they also

realized they didn't, none of them had their driver's license at the age of, you know, late 20s to early 30s. So they decided to challenge themselves. Recently, at the beginning of the year, we all got our G1s and now we're all working towards our G2s. So it's like this common goal that we all have together just off of meeting at the village. They celebrated a one-year friend anniversary recently, and they're going to do a pottery class next. Basically, from nothing came something. That's awesome. And it's like, it just shows that if you put the work in, you can create these bonds. So that's a really great story. There are a lot of tools that funnel people towards specific interests. You kind of talked about this earlier, like, you know, there's the mom groups, there's the knitting, there's the

athletes out there. And it seems natural to connect, you know, around these shared interests. But I guess, is of people through sort of house parties. And I always gravitated towards people who were quite different than me, who I could learn something from and then sort of have them affect me or influence me, you know, get me out of my shell or challenge me. And I certainly wouldn't have found those people if I was sort of ticking boxes and choosing people that sort of mirrored me. And, you know, there's some research into this idea that interests sort of aren't the be-all, end-all. There's an author named Shasta Nelson, and she did sort of a popular TED Talk on them. We perceive interests as sort of fundamental to friendships. So maybe you're on a baseball league and you see each other every week, and you assume that you're connecting because of this shared interest. But what you're really doing is having consistency. You're seeing those people every week.

That's the actual bond. It's not so much the interest. So I think some of these new tools and the thinkers behind these new tools are sort of questioning, should we be prioritizing interests or trying to get people to connect in other ways? And the same thing goes with, you know, we tend to befriend people our own age, and there's a lot to be said for intergenerational friendships. So we lose a bit of that too, when we're hiving off with just people in our own generation. So we've talked a lot about how the traditional dating methods are being applied to finding friendships. But we're also hearing more and more from single people that are kind of turning away from the apps, right,

and kind of going out into the world. How are these friendship apps and meetups learning from their romance-oriented predecessors? I think, you know, some of the infrastructure is obviously very reminiscent of those apps, you know, the swiping, the profile, the interests list, and unfortunately, the ghosting. So I think that's what some of the services are sort of trying to get away from. The infrastructure's there. But really, I think, as you noticed on Peanut, they'll guide you towards specific meetups, in-person meetups. Basically, the goal is to get people offline, off their screens, and back into the real world. So dating apps themselves have also started to shift their lens. Bumble is reinvesting in Bumble for friends. And they've also acquired

Geneva, which is sort of a Gen Z app that really touts those offline connections. And Hinge is doing something interesting. It's called One More Hour, and they are donating a million dollars to community organizations that really try to get Gen Z meeting out in the real world. So ironically enough, it's all tech that's sort of

trying to push people offline. There is a sense that there are some lessons learned, you know, from the mistakes of the dating sphere where people are sort of just swiping maniacally and never really getting anywhere. Yeah, absolutely. Just lastly, we talked a little bit about community and the loss of community in this third space. So is this the new reality? Are these apps and these ways of meeting new people? Is this just how we're going to be building community in the future. It remains to be seen, again, that the push is to get back offline. So whether this is sort of a blip, we'll see because we really are

at this point of reemergence and people are being called back into the office. We are sort of like reemerging from that pandemic cocoon. So we'll see if we sort of snap back to the status quo and whether some of these spaces return to us or whether these tools will stick.

Some of the people using them have really found bonds and these bonds are now years long. So I think it's just one more tool. And one of the founders put it to me, there's no wrong way to make a friend. Zosia, it's been so great talking to you about this. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Kelsey Arnett is our intern. Michal Stein produced this episode. Our producers are Madeline White and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening.