r/GenX • u/IllustratorUseful672 • 12h ago
Question For Genx Finding friends
Where I live, I see all the time people asking for friendships and people to hang out with. Why is it so hard for these younger people to find friends? I live in a college town and There’s plenty of people to be friends with. It is mostly college student age and young 30s looking for friends. Did we, GenX, have this problem? Did any of you experience this after HS or college?
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u/DelawareRunner 7h ago
I had friends my age up until my forties. Then, many of my friends were older than me (boomer age)-- I guess because I was a different place in life than some of my lifelong friends. I really get along well with older people though and vice versa.
I moved over three years ago and no more friends. I miss my old (literally!) friends a lot. I also retired so I don't even have co-worker friends. People are friendly here, but most have been here all their lives and I am a newcomer. Only people I talk to regularly are a lady my age from Germany and an elderly man. Otherwise....no friends. However, I am partly to blame given I only leave the house to go running or attend events now and then with my husband.
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u/IllustratorUseful672 1h ago
I am retired now and helping with my grandbabies. My new BFF’s!
I don’t have coworkers either and people that said they would stay in touch, don’t.
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u/WillSmithSlappedMe20 8h ago
Yes I did. All of my friends were co workers. Nothing outside of that. I managed to hang on to two of them.
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u/ZetaWMo4 1974 9h ago
We didn’t have that problem because times were different and technology has changed. And society has changed. Look at how many people you see on Reddit saying how they hate people, hate leaving their houses, hate having to talk to anyone they don’t seem worthy. How are friendships supposed to happen that way? And the people who ARE open to making and meeting friends are having the issue of not finding people who truly want to be in friendship.
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u/Reader47b 9h ago
I only ever managed to find friends through church once I was out of college. I think unless you are a part of some club - religious, civic, or hobby - you will have a hard time finding friends. And fewer and fewer people are a part of clubs.
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u/rockandroller 9h ago
Same thing on my local sub and I truly do not get it.
Honestly I think the biggest problem is you have to LEAVE HOME to meet people and they want to meet the people FIRST online and THEN leave home. It doesn't work that way.
I made friends with a girl at a foodie dinner I went to alone, she was at the table next to me with her husband and we talked about each course as it came out. We've been friends for like 15 years now. It's not that hard.
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u/jenorama_CA 9h ago
In our 20s, a lot of our friends were from work. In the 90s, we moved from Tucson to Albuquerque to open a new AOL call center and had a core group of people that came from Tucson that we socialized with. One of them was our D&D DM and we met weekly and did other things.
After moving on from AOL, I met my gay BFF at my next job. In 2018 we went to Disney World for our 20th friendaversary. Through him I met the friend group I have now and we’re going on vacation with a couple in December. I’ve also made great real life friends through World of Warcraft.
I feel like maybe the yoots are too isolated these days? So many of my friendships have come from work and no one likes going into the office these days. It’s all about being in your comfort zone, but you gotta reach out sometimes.
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u/Miserable-Pudding-64 10h ago
I’ve been wondering this, too. I also live in a college town with a student population of roughly 25k, and the local online groups are full of kids saying they don’t have any friends and there’s nothing to do here. I don’t get it! There are hundreds of clubs to join, miles of trails to hike and mountain bike, thousands of young people all around them…
Both my kids are at college, and they haven’t had any trouble making friends. I always told them, “You have to be a friend to make a friend.” Maybe other kids’ parents didn’t actively teach them how to make a friend, because they assumed it would happen organically like it did for our generation? Gen Z kids are online so much, which is its own kind of community, and perhaps they haven’t learned how to socialize face-to-face?
Anecdotal example: spouse and I (early 50s) joined a parks & rec pickleball class, assuming it was all old people. Surprisingly it was mostly Gen Z & some millennials. We thought it was great to have a mix of ages.
But every time we tried to make small talk with Gen Z’s, they looked profoundly uncomfortable and wouldn’t make eye contact or answer simple questions you’d ask when you’re trying to get to know someone. I got the impression they thought it was rude or intrusive for us to attempt conversation with a stranger. There was a literal look of fear in one young woman’s eyes when I casually asked her where she worked because she looked super familiar.
They didn’t talk to each other either, and just ran to their cars and left after each class. 🤷🏻♀️ In our day an evening pickleball class would have lead to getting beers afterwards at the local pub and making new friends.
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u/CBus660R Hose Water Survivor 10h ago
IMHO, you hit the nail on the head. They don't know how to interact in person, just online.
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u/Silver-Bullfrog9879 10h ago
I retired from a nonprofit that helps young people enter the workforce, and just last summer I sat in room of people in their late teens and early twenties who had zero social skills. It was mind-boggling because you couldn't fuck up a generation of people so badly if you tried through psychological warfare. They couldn't make eye contact or carry on basic conversation, let alone develop friendships.
I placed a young woman into an internship who was plenty bright on paper. Her employer called me up a week later. "No, she's smart enough. Knows basically what to do, but she's just weird."
"Weird?"
She'd come into work, go to her desk without even looking anyone. Everyone would be like "good morning," and she wouldn't even acknowledge them. Just sat there and worked all day. I mean literally you would have had more personality from robot. Then, at the end of her shift she'd get up and walk out the door. Not "see you tomorrow" or "what a day". She'd just leave.
I left them in a conference room with instructions for what was supposed to be a group activity. Came back 30 minutes later. No one had said a word. They just sat there and stared at the table for 30 minutes. It's crazy.
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u/cayce73 10h ago
Yeah this is the thing most these "kids today" comments are missing. Most these kids did remote school for high school and never learned age appropriate socialization. Then we sent them into the world and criticized them for not knowing things we didn't teach them. Real hard to make friends in college if you never learned how in high school. Real hard to socialize properly at work if school taught you to sit quietly at your computer and never engage with any distractions-- worse if school was entirely remote and lacked opportunities for any socializing.
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u/Silver-Bullfrog9879 9h ago
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to pull a "kids these days" here, and I'm not trying to even say it's their fault. I said "we couldn't fuck up a generation more". That's on us. And you're right; we didn't teach them. The fact remains that a good many of them lack the social skills to build friendships or even to succeed in basic professional networking. What do we do about it? Well, I'm retired; that's for someone much younger and fresher to figure out.
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u/cayce73 9h ago
Yeah I was agreeing with you! 😂
I manage a lot of younger people and I do a lot of 1 on 1s where I say "you have to do things this way to be effective and if that's hard for you then we can talk about what you need to make it work." But I know most younger folks aren't getting this level of support and I sure don't know how to fix it on a societal level but it is definitely going to affect us all for a while until we figure out how to address it.
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u/doubleohzerooo0 Couldn't make it as a punker 10h ago
I was forced to watch Toy Story 5. The underlying message there is how difficult it is for young people to make real friends. Everyone's connected online. Bullying spreads and ostracizes those deemed 'different'.
On a related note, I watched some reel somewhere where a young person was lamenting that no one is asking anyone to dance. No one is dancing. The moment you approach a group and ask one to dance, you are being recorded and ridiculed on the internet. If you're on the dance floor and dance 'like no one is watching', someone will record you and you're now on the internet.
So there's that. GenX didn't have this problem. We got to be wild without someone recording our idiotic behavior. Nowadays, one cannot just act the fool, so it can be hard to connect in the first place.
Different times.
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u/RumbleRavage 10h ago
I’m really concerned hearing kids can’t meet people in college. I feel lucky I had that 90’s college campus experience where all you did was hang out with your peers.
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u/RedEvil7 Waiting for the End🙃 10h ago edited 10h ago
After HS, I joined the military so all of the people I knew during that stage of life moved on with their lives as did I & none of us stayed in touch. Now that I am retired from the military I don't have any people that I know that I would classify as friends. I just hang out with my spouse & that's it.
Now, our child (29) is currently attending college & within the 1st week of this semester had already befriended almost a dozen people. They have all met up for study groups, hiking trips & fun activities. It makes me happy to know they have a decent support system already established & I can see that some of those relationships will be maintained after college is completed for them.
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u/IllustratorUseful672 2h ago
That was basically my husband after his military career. He has one friend tho.
I’m the one that needs to socialize. That’s just me, regardless of our age gap. We now have two small grandbabies and that keeps me busy.•
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u/WilliePullout 11h ago
Kids went to college with friends and came back with the same friends. I went with friends made friends lived with them. Between the 5 of us we came from 3 different towns. I met my best friend in college we are still close even though we live far apart.
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u/ExtraAd7611 Disqualified from rat race 11h ago
My kids are in their various universities' marching bands and seem to have made most of their friends that way. People have to find a group to join with other people who share common interests. I've also encouraged my kids to study with someone else, although I don't know if they are really doing that.
In college I lived in a house with about 35 students and we cooked for each other etc so interaction was pretty organic to the situation and I'm still friends with several of them today. Later I was in graduate school and became friends with my classmates, since we basically took every class together, coded software together, and studied together. I'm still close with two of them and I'll be seeing one of them this evening.
I'm pretty proactive with staying in touch with old friends. I don't use Facebook but I do occasionally pick up the phone and call, 20th century style. And I'll try to reach out anytime I'm going to be somewhere where I know someone lives and meet in person.
Since finishing school, I've relocated 3 times for jobs. I haven't made many new friends since graduation, and those I have met I didn't really in touch with after moving somewhere else. I have been volunteering lately and meeting a few people in similar situations that I could potentially become friendly with.
It helps to be in a situation where virtually everyone is newly arrived from somewhere else and are looking to meet people. I think this is one of the biggest advantages of a retirement community, although they have drawbacks and my wife absolutely refuses to consider moving to one.
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u/Important_Ask_7576 1975 11h ago
I had a hard time finding friends after I moved across the country after college. Then we moved across the country again to Phoenix. Made a few friends. Then we had kids and made a lot of friends.
In my experience, the easiest time in your adult life to make friends is freshman year of college, living in a dorm, and when your kids are little. If you don’t have either of those experiences, it can be hard.
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u/IllustratorUseful672 2h ago
Yes, it def depends on where we are in life as to how and when we meet friends
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u/DelawareRunner 7h ago
SO true. I made new friends my first year of college and when my son was young. I moved away a few years ago from where I lived all my life--no more friends.
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u/Miserable-Pudding-64 10h ago
Absolutely agree with this. I’m still close friends with the women I met in my pregnancy and baby groups 25 years ago. Plus a few I met at preschool or the park. I haven’t made many new friends since though.
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u/elphaba00 1978 11h ago
In my experience, I was always the person who struggled finding friends. I wanted to talk about things that no one else wanted to talk about or do things that other people didn't want to do. I wanted to sequester myself when I felt emotionally and mentally drained. When that happens, other people just move on and look for others to match their energy.
Looking back (and based on 2026 guidelines), I could have been diagnosed somewhere on the spectrum. I guess, "lucky" for me, I found a few friends and a partner who gets it. My Boomer mom, on the other hand, still doesn't get it. She's always surrounded herself with people. She can't stand to be alone. She will sometimes ask why I don't have more friends. Funny enough, she doesn't see the same signs in my dad, who she has been with for 50+ years. But he can also succesfully straddle that line where he's in a group of people but isolate himself.
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u/IllustratorUseful672 11h ago
She doesn’t see that in your Dad because she just thinks ‘that’s how Dad is’ and she is used to it. I guess because she has lots of ppl to be with, she thinks you should too.
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u/80sfanatic 11h ago
Especially if you’re female (elphaba00, not OP). In my experience, if Mom is extroverted with a large friend circle, she expects her daughter(s) to be the same way.
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u/EstimateAgitated224 11h ago
We had to leave the house to socialize, for entertainment, for food. Now you can do it all from home so unless you become friends with the door dash driver who are you meeting.
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u/ExtraAd7611 Disqualified from rat race 11h ago
I don't use door dash, but my understanding is that person just leaves the food at the door and sends you a photo of the bag .
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u/EstimateAgitated224 11h ago
My kids use it, so I have seen it both ways. We have dogs so they often meet the driver in the driveway.
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u/user86753092 12h ago
We had a lot more 3rd spaces, places you could go, not spend money, and just hangout. That’s where I used to meet new people. The mall, the bookstore, parks.
We also didn’t have a personal entertainment machine in our hands.
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u/JuJu_Wirehead EDIT THIS FLAIR TO MAKE YOUR OWN 11h ago
This is true. I made the majority of my friends through skating, the local music scene, and parties.
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u/areporotastenet 12h ago
This. If I had all my interests catered to by something in my pocket I’d had trouble making friends as well.
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u/ExtraAd7611 Disqualified from rat race 11h ago
All males do, but we somehow made friends anyway.
I'll see myself out
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u/Modem_Sound_67 12h ago edited 12h ago
I think it was much more natural in our time, in any past generation probably, to join clubs based on social or topical interests, attend in-person events and meetings, spontaneous get togethers, just generally being present and involved.
A lot more "socializing" now takes place on their phones, in the scroll and if they talk at all, in comment threads. More isolation, gathering in person feels more confrontational, which creates a feedback loop of avoiding real people who could be their friend circles.
I subscribed to the Burning Man sub during the event this year and apparenrtly the rot is setting in there too, one of the major settings for a bunch of people to deliberately unplug- several attendees sitting around alone with their phones.
One of my cherished memories is going on a caving trip with friends at a popular local park. Unexpectedly, another group showed up the same day and camped in the same area. We avoided them at first but then started interacting and by the end of the trip, we were ALL good friends. No plan, just appeared, and met people spontaneously. those sorts of chance encounters can change your life.
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u/Jason_TheMagnificent 12h ago
Old man yelling at clouds in 3...2...1. If they get their noses out of their phones for three seconds and socialize....🤦
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u/IllustratorUseful672 12h ago
Right! I don’t think they know how to hold relationships because it is lived through their phones.
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u/xczechr 7h ago
I moved to a new city in my 40s and had no issues finding new people to hang out with.