Why Friendship Anxiety Is Trending Everywhere Right Now
A discussion about friendship, community, acquaintances, and where we go from here.
Friendship is something that has been talked about by everyone lately. It is a topic that has been discussed again and again on social media, in group chats, and in person. Everyone is feeling a bit lonely and isolated. Conversely, everyone is feeling a bit of friendship anxiety as we are all navigating different stages of life and different shared realities. So where do we go from here?
Friendship is novel, and friendship exists in a beautiful liminal space in our lives. Friends, generally, are our first taste of having community outside of one’s family. Basically, we can’t choose our families, but we can sure as heck choose our friends. Childhood friendships are looked at as precocious, whimsical, and wholesome. Friendship when we are in grade school tends to seem magical. We made friends in school based on common interests. If you and the girl next to you like the same book, the same color, or the same food, then boom, instant best friend.
That young friendship is held in place not just by common interests but also by location and time. The glue, at the time, lies in shared experience, shared camaraderie, and, for some, shared identity. The glue is that most of your experiences will be shared in relatively the same order. Everyone attends the same handful of classes. Everyone goes to the same cafeteria for lunch. Everyone goes to the same hangout spots: the mall, the theater, and the skate rink. You can plan hangouts that are simple and revolve around either your house or theirs. No one really has that much money, so going out is reduced to pizza outings or lounge days at the mall. Childhood and young friendship tend to be baked in the day-to-day lives of you and your friend. Things are planned out for you, and things follow a step-by-step ladder. In many cases, that leads us not to think about our friendship; we take it as a fact. Sometimes we take them for granted.
Traditionally, the first real test for a childhood friend is going away to college. College can bring discombobulation into friendship as it is the first time people are making independent choices apart from family and friends influence. You might decide to go to college hundreds of miles away from your hometown, which can cause people to begin to lose some of their friends in the process. And this can happen for a variety of reasons. Going to college is, for many, the first time they get to try out independence. This means you get to develop your own beliefs, values, goals, and thoughts separate from those of your younger self. That could cause clashes with those you used to know if they are not developing alongside you or if they develop completely different beliefs than you. You are no longer small-town Anna or small-town Jules. This, plus distance, could cause people to grow apart and grow in different directions. For some, this is a necessary change. For others, it could feel detrimental.
Despite this, there are childhood friends who can and do survive the road to college. The new lifeline of the internet and social media can create a social balm and connection that can help friendships thrive even when people are hundreds of miles away. The internet can help with the keeping of connections because it provides a safe ground and a safe haven for you to keep up with your friends as you embark on your new journey and new life. And it can help keep conversations going as everyone navigates the stage of early adulthood. Topics including first love, first kiss, college exams, college parties, football games, and more can all be viewed on the social media homepage. There are enough shared updates to seem like everyone is still on the same page, even as one makes new friends and expands their inner circle. Because everyone is on the same page, it might not seem like time is lost. It might seem easier to pick up where you left off, and conversations keep going.
Adulthood changes the nature of friendship. Early and emerging adulthood makes people feel the pressure of having a ‘friend group’, even if most don’t talk on a regular basis. Emerging adulthood can leave one feeling lonely in friend groups. It can cause tension in friendship groups. It can reveal cracks in once-stable friend groups.
Then comes adulthood. Adulthood is the second real test of friendships. In adulthood, friendship can get tricky. This is where life stages (and differing life stages) can upend even the most successful friendship. Adulthood comes with a lot of headaches, but adulthood is where the bubble of college starts to burst. Adulthood is where you can see everyone’s values, priorities, and beliefs on full display. Adulthood is where you begin to cement and settle into your new self. And, for some people, they might not like what they see in their old friend. Outside of college, friendships that were once on the same page may no longer be on the same page. For example, one friend might focus more on climbing the corporate ladder and making a name for themselves at their job. Another friend can be focused on building their relationship and buying a house. Another friend might have to go back home to save money while going to graduate school.
All three can be around the same age but are in all different life stages, which can send the group into a tizzy. For one, money could be a topic of contention, as the friend buying a house or the one going to graduate school might be strapped for cash and might not have as many expendable funds as the one who has a steady corporate job. This could make hangouts harder or nearly impossible. And scheduling is already hard enough when one’s life revolves around work, friends, significant others, school, family, and more. It can lead to people prioritizing different events and activities that others might not have on their priority list. This might lead to some older friends feeling forgotten or less than. This can cause an unresolved rift that further leads to a ripple effect.
Sometimes the values are too great to fix the friendship. And it can feel like whiplash. Do you really let go of a friendship because you are not connecting at the moment, or do you hold on, hoping that you will connect later?
To make matters even more complex, different life stages in general can reveal different life values. Someone who is buying a house and looking to expand their family may be interested in saving funds and having a more quiet life after having outgrown the hustle and bustle of a city or party life. For some, the life changes could be catastrophic, as they might be taken as confirmation or rejection of how one is living their life. If someone is constantly harping on one friend not being fun because they have an early bedtime because they have to be at work at a certain time, then it might not seem like the person is considering the friend’s needs. On the flip side, if a friend is constantly ignoring text messages asking to hang out or always rejecting requests, it might be a sign that they really don’t want to hang out with you. Which could lead to further pulling away or a feedback loop where neither party reaches out, leading to a ‘friend rut’ or, at worst, the break up of a friendship.
Adult friendship tends to have these issues because people no longer have the bias of being proximate to their friend group. The social glue of the past of being proximate, in the same home town, or on the same life page is gone for many friends. This can cause conflict, misunderstandings, miscommunications, and more. It can cause one to feel lonely in their group of friends, or even worse, it might be hard to recognize their former friends as they enter new life stages without them. And the thing is, there is no real, clear definition of when to let an old friendship go. Unlike romantic relationships, there is no real manual on how to break up with a friend or if you should break up with a friend. It can cause one to feel like they are overreacting to an event if one sees it as a rejection while the other sees it as a change in priorities. While social media makes it easier to stay connected, it also makes it harder to let go. This can cause us to hang on to connections that may or may not be good or that have inevitably just run their course.
Furthermore, just in general, the pandemic has shifted our definition of friendship and also changed our perspective on time. Media outlets have taken notice of this and called it ‘the pandemic skip’, which has made it seem like our lives have fast-forward in a way without a rewind button. For some, that means time has sped up and they have been caught unaware, left wondering how much time they have to meet certain adult milestones -such as getting engaged, buying a house, etc- that matter to them and their circumstances. This may lead to feelings of ‘falling behind’ or being 'stuck in life'. For others, the aftermath of the pandemic made them want to take charge and to get started on all the things they want to do on their bucket list. This might mean, for them, their priorities revolve around attending a ton of events, traveling a lot, having late-night dinners, and just in general being out more. This could further the rift or fracture between friends if one is on one side of the fence and the other is on the other.
This analysis of the fractures and rifts of friendship can be fruitful, especially when we think about the overall implications of the life script. This is not a concept based on real evidence—maybe more just anecdotal experiences—but most people who came of age in the eighties and nineties experienced some version of this. The life script fundamentally states that we have a template or step-by-step ladder to success or having a successful life. This means going to school, meeting a significant other, getting married, having or expanding a family, and living life in a comfortable environment. For most of our lives, we have been in cohorts—where most friendships form—and as we move through life as a cohort, we reach milestones, in general, around the same time or near proximity to each other. While in school (and to some extent in college), this means going from one grade to the next in one fell swoop. It means no one gets left behind. It means friends and friend groups are typically on the same structure, in the same place, and all are following some template and a structure that is easy to follow and hard to deviate from. It gives you relatability to others. It gives you social glue and connectivity to continue on.
Adulthood throws us a curve-ball because not everyone wants to follow the life script, and not everyone can. Because of this, the cohort breaks apart. Some meet the milestones laid in front of them. Some shun the milestones laid out in them. Some adopt certain milestones, like going to college and having a career, while others decide that they would rather do things less linear. And the thing is, no one is really right or wrong about how they live life, but from the other side, it might be hard to relate to someone who is on a completely different page, a different chapter, or a different book all together. In essence, friendship often offers a mirror or a sounding board for our life choices. It is easy to feel confident about the decisions you are making when you see them being reflected back by those you love and care about. It is easy to find solace when you have people who can relate to your life circumstances. It is easy to feel like you are in community when you are doing something that others around your age or similar life development are also doing and are also approve of. For some, it may be hard for them to relate to others or feel comfortable around others who are making completely different life choices. You might feel distraught if you see a close friend bemoaning your choices or tearing them down, especially if their choices look very different from your own. It might be hard in those moments to believe that there is no right or wrong when you feel like their life looks right and your life just looks different.
Friendship anxiety is trending because we do not want an audience; we want a community, but we do not know how to put forth the effort to sustain one.
Americans, in general, have been talking more and more about feeling lonely, even in this hyper-connected world. Social media has contributed to making us feel more lonely while promising to help us stay connected. As mentioned earlier, social media has made it possible to feel connected to friends of the past. You can still have a window into their lives. But instead of an active relationship with this friend, you develop a parasocial relationship with them. Social media has also made it hard to let go of people who should have been let go sooner. As adults, when your choices in life reveal themselves and one feels more set in their ways and decisions, they may wonder if a friendship has naturally run its course. The answer may be yes, but social media, with its constant checking, notifications, and updates, may keep one from pulling the plug on the friendship, which may have been easier to do in the past. And to be honest, social media almost commodifies friendship. The friend now becomes part of your audience. It is a low-hanging fruit or low-hanging investment. It makes you feel like you are doing the work of having friendship and community without actually doing the work.
We also have to contend with the fact that some people may not actually want friends as they get older. Some may lean more into their families of origin or families they expanded. They may decide that friendship is not worth the trouble, or they may be too tired from their day-to-day responsibilities to invest what little energy they can into a friendship, new or old. Life in general can make people feel like they are running from place to place with little to no support. And adding and maintaining a friendship from the past can just feel like one more thing on a never-ending to-do list. And this pressure can exist even when both parties mean well. Right now, there is increasing social pressure to look perfect and pretend things are fine even when they are not. There is more responsibilities placed on us at younger ages. That can be hard on an individual who just want to live their life. It might also make us all hesitant to make new friends or to expand our lives in that arena, especially when we don’t know if we can trust new people to be in our new lives. It might also create feeling of nostalgia and makes some of us cling to our past- back when times felt simpler. Somehow this could lead to us keeping friendships that have passed their time.
There is no real ‘cure’ for friendship anxiety, and if you are wondering what your next moves should be, take a second to take stock of your life, your values, and your beliefs. After taking an internal assessment of where you want to be, your goals, your values, and your beliefs, conduct a friendship audit. A friendship audit might sound scary and too formal, but it may be what you need to really assess yourself and your friends in your life. What a friendship audit does—it reveals who you should pour your time and invest in, who might be better for hanging out for drinks and a movie every now and then, and who might be best for a text once in a blue moon. It can also reveal if you should invest in pouring into older friends or making new ones. If you decide that you need to add more to your circle, it might be fruitful to go to community events, try social media apps for making friends, or attend theme meetups in your area.
A friendship audit might also reveal that you don’t have time for new or old friends. And that is okay, too. There are multiple seasons in life, and some seasons call for a small reduction in your relationships so you can focus on meeting other needs and goals right in front of you. The best thing in this situation is to be open and honest with yourself and others. And sometimes you might need to just recall everything and start from scratch, and that’s okay too. There are scenarios in life when you realize that trying to fit your past into your new life is like fitting a key into the wrong lock. And when that happens, you need to bid farewell to your past and your nostalgia and dive headfirst into your future.
And sometimes a friendship audit makes you realize that your former friends are better off as acquaintances. It can reveal that saying goodbye completely or shunning them completely is not the correct move. Instead, a new or fresh approach may be needed which might include acknowledging that both parties have changed, and with those changes comes a new relationship. Maybe your childhood best friend is just someone who is not someone you can connect with at all times, but instead, is someone that you can cheer for from afar. Maybe you realize that your college classmate is actually someone you need more of in your life. And maybe you just need to find a new group or new friends entirely. Take note of all those feelings. All of those feelings are valid and are okay to feel.
Ultimately, the space for truth is that there is no right or wrong answer to how you want to handle your friendship as you move forward with your life. The decision of how you handle friendship and the decision of what we do with friendship will always be in flux. As we get more settled into life, we will find ways to come to terms with the fact that there are plenty of ways to have a friendship and develop a community; it just might not look like what we are used to from before.