All participant names in this story are pseudonyms.
What does it mean to have few or no friends in a time when social connection is seen as key to a healthy and fulfilling life? This is the question at the centre of our recent research study on modern friendship in an Atlantic Canadian city.
Friendship is having a cultural moment. From journalists to physicians, a wide range of experts have pointed to friendship and social connection as being vital for people to live good and healthy lives and as a way to combat a growing “loneliness epidemic.”
But not everyone experiences friendship in the same way. Andrew, a student in his mid-20s who took part in our study, identified as having no friends. He told us:
“I do feel sad and lonely a lot. But I also feel kind of at peace, because I’m pretty introverted. I do want my alone time. So I kind of struggle going back and forth between liking not having friends and then also hating it. It’s just those two are always in conflict.”
Andrew’s experience reflects the broader tensions many people feel about modern friendship. While friendship is widely valued, western culture also prizes self-sufficiency and sees virtues in introversion.
These ideals can affirm a desire for solitude, but they don’t stop people from worrying about the negative effects of living friendless lives. These conflicting messages can leave people unsure of how to feel about living without friends.
Exploring friendlessness in adulthood
In our study, we interviewed 21 men and women to understand experiences of friendlessness. Over half were in the “quarter life” phase, meaning they were in their 20s or 30s. They ranged from young professionals, to students, to minimum wage workers.
Some participants had rich family lives, professional lives or spousal relationships. Others were almost entirely socially isolated. Still, all participants saw lacking friends as something they struggled with, thought about or needed to justify to others.
Research has shown that being alone doesn’t always mean people are lonely and that people may give different meanings to their solitude.
Since we recruited “friendless” rather than “lonely” people for our study, we didn’t assume that people without friends were lonely. Instead, we aimed to understand how they experienced life without friends.
Why people struggle to make friends
Participants in our study reported a range of challenges to making friends, as well as insights into what it’s like not to have them.
Challenges included lacking regular encounters with others due to the structures of school or work or having quit social media and lost touch with friends. Some were disappointed by friendships in the past, or reported other priorities over making friends.
For example, Tim, a lawyer in his 30s, explained there are many “metrics” of a good life, and that he had no friends because he had chosen to put his time into his career and family.
Melissa, an administrative assistant in her 20s, felt she always ended up in “lopsided” friendships where she gave more than she received.
Andrew explained that he no longer had friends at university after moving out of residence, a problem compounded by the public health restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, the pandemic didn’t necessarily cause new friendship challenges. Most of our participants said they already had no friends, so lockdown orders didn’t change anything.
Friendless but not always lonely
Our study revealed two key narratives people told about the relation of friendlessness to loneliness. On the one hand, they reported intense loneliness and said they suffered without friends. On the other hand, people said having no friends afforded opportunities for self-sufficiency and independence.
Crucially, there was no clear distinction between participants who claimed to be lonely or not lonely. Rather, participants often told conflicting stories of feeling lonely without friends or feeling good about being alone or self-reliant.
Melissa, for example, talked about her profound loneliness, yet also spoke with pride about how she has learned to get herself out of any situation because she had no one to rely on.
Regardless of the degree of loneliness they reported, our quarter-life participants often felt shame or stigma for being friendless. Some of our participants imagined others thought there was something wrong with them.
If you have experienced these feelings, you aren’t alone. While people may blame themselves or feel shame, as social scientists, we believe the causes of friendlessness or loneliness are bigger than individuals and their choices.
Making friends isn’t just a personal challenge
To formulate solutions to social disconnection, it’s not enough to simply ask, “why don’t people just go and make friends?” While friendship often appears to be a matter of personal choice and mutual liking, like all social relationships, it can be enabled or constrained by the broader ways our societies are organized.
If there is a loneliness epidemic, it can’t be understood solely as a matter of individual choice or the pitfalls of social media or other technology. It also needs to be seen as a structural condition born of infrastructural and policy failures that require collective solutions to address.
A better question might be: is friendship accessible to people? Are there enough free, inclusive public spaces where people can gather to meet or make friends? How do the rigid, often unpredictable work schedules faced by many young adults make it difficult to cultivate friendships?
You may recognize these barriers in your own life and feel disconnected not because you aren’t trying, but because the conditions for connection are so often missing.
If our society values friendship as much as it claims in the quest to combat loneliness, then collectively we could be doing much more to create social spaces and policies that enable social connection.
Laura Eramian receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Peter Mallory receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
