How to Use Apps to Actually Make Friends

With loneliness at epidemic levels in the U.S., many people could use a few more friends to lean on. Survey data suggest that many U.S. adults want to make new friends—perhaps because strong relationships are one of the best predictors of happiness and well-being—but struggle to do so. About 8% of U.S. adults say they don’t have any close friends at all. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Enter the apps. Bumble for Friends, Hey! VINA, Wink, and plenty more promise to help people make friends online. Many work just like dating apps: you build a profile that includes photos and a bio, then swipe through other people’s profiles until you find someone who seems like a potential match. If you pick each other, you can start chatting. Despite their similarities, friendship apps haven’t taken off in quite the way dating apps have. Online dating is now the most popular way for U.S. heterosexual couples to meet, yet just 8% of U.S. adults say they’ve met a close friend online. (Data from Bumble, however, suggest that the practice is significantly more common among Gen Z adults.) Jeffrey Hall, director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kansas, says there’s still a stigma around meeting friends online, just as there was with online dating in its earlier days. The common assumption is that “if you’re a normal person, you should have no trouble making friends,” Hall says. But in truth...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news