30-year-old reveals sad reality of being a young person right now in struggle to make friends

Millennials and Gen Zers might be the most connected generations, but they struggle to make friends.

They’ve found themselves in a bizarre reality where they’ve become increasingly lonely despite their constant connection through swiping, posting, tweeting, texting, snap-chatting, direct messaging and sharing their locations on social media.

Research from the dating app Bumble in 2023 found that 37 per cent of Gen Z women in Australia feel lonely every week, and 25 per cent of Millennials have shared that they feel lonely every week, too.

Grace, 30, is lonely and still trying to make friends.

The paramedic lives in Melbourne and has always “struggled” to make friends outside of work.

Online, her life looks perfect, a sea of dressed-up social occasions and wine nights, but she’s craving friendship.

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She recently started discussing her quest to make friends and putting herself out there online. She’s come to accept that friendships don’t just happen organically and she needs to be proactive in her approach.

So how does one do that in 2024?

The young Aussie started by asking a shop assistant at a local boutique she frequents if she’d like to hang out.

It was a leap of faith, and Grace had to do it face-to-face because she didn’t have her number or social media.

“I asked this girl to be my friend. I felt so awkward, I felt like I was asking someone out on a date, and I was so scared of being rejected,” she said.

Grace kept it short and sweet.

“I said I actually need friends, and I was wondering if you’d like to meet for coffee sometime. And she was like, yes, I need girlfriends too!”

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By sharing her journey online, she’s found that many people around her age and younger are in the same boat.

“To see the overwhelming amount of you that feel exactly like me with not having friends. It feels really nice to not feel alone,” she admitted.

Underneath Grace’s videos, women commented, sharing that they want the same things and crave the idea of making more friends.

“I’m so down to meet new friends,” one commented.

“I’d love to come and make some friends,” another shared.

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“I wish I had your confidence,” one admitted.

Grace said that despite the fact that, on the surface, she seems to have a full and busy life, making friends has always been a sore point.

“I didn’t know how to make friends in the wider community,” she told news.com.au.

“I have always been a bit of an anxious person, so I wasn’t confident to go out and make friends in the wild, and there wasn’t a lot of resources I could find online at the time.”

The young Aussie said she thinks it is so hard for people her age because of the lasting impacts of the pandemic.

“People are working from home a lot more, not going out to socialize as much, and this makes it really hard to meet people. I feel like most of my interactions with people are through a screen, which can feel isolating,” she said.

She knows not every Gen Zer or Millennial is lonely, but she feels like she’s part of a large group who are. She’s not married and doesn’t belong to a big friend group.

“With my shift work, my family living over three hours away and having two dogs while living by myself, I don’t have much time to socialise. And then the time I do have doesn’t align with the people I want to see, because they have children or are also shift workers,” she said.

“I think, in general, we are more lonely because so much of our life is done through a screen and we are interacting with each other less.”

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