Despite Social Media, 53% of Millennials Don’t Know Where to Meet People
It’s official, Millennials just overtook Baby Boomers as the largest generation in the U.S. with over 83.1 million adults, contributing to a fifth of consumer spending annually — a powerful workforce with a lot of money to spend.
Big cities like NYC, San Francisco, Boston, and DC are now the hubs of Millennials. With high paying jobs, luxurious apartment buildings, thousands in frequent miles from traveling, should Millennials be the happiest and most social generation of all time?
The crisis nobody is talking about.
Lying beneath the surface of an extravagant lifestyle is a very lonely generation that relies heavily on online interactions to feel “connected”.
In 2018, a study by CVS Health revealed two stunning facts about the Millennial generation:
- 53% of Millennials don’t know where to meet people
- Almost half, 48% of them, no longer have a desire to be social
How many friends do you have? Most of your FB friends are not real friends, says Oxford study.
The average Facebook user may have have hundreds or thousands of friends on Facebook, but only a small number of those friends can be counted on during tough times — according to a study by Oxford University psychology professor Robin Dunbar.
Dunbar studied the results from 3,375 Facebook users between the ages of 18 and 65 in the U.K. These users had an average of about 150 friends, of which 4.1 were dependable and 13.6 expressed sympathy during an “emotional crisis.” You will notice that these numbers align closely with Dunbar’s number theory.
Younger users are likely to have more Facebook friends, but older users tend to have more friends in real life.
And it has a very real impact on your health.
Surprisingly, healthcare only attributes to about 10% of your health. 55% of which can be traced back to individual behaviors and social circumstance.
Ever felt like you can’t get out of bed? Fatigue, tiredness? Research shows social interactions play a very crutial role on both emotional and physical health.
That hug you got last week really helped you a long way even if you didn’t notice it.
Three ways to make more real friends.
How many close friends do you have? If you can’t not count more than 4, chances are you need to meet new people.
We interviewed 40 highly sociable people in our network and found three commonalities:
- Making friends is like building a sale funnel but it’s not a number game. Understand not all people you meet will become your friend. There are personality filters and common interests that will decrease the number of qualified “candidates” you will meet. Most people get it wrong because they try to size up a candidate using an online profile while traces like personalities can only be revealed through in-person interactions.
- Talking is great but doing things together will make you 3 times more likely to develop meaningful relationships. Research shows people who spend even just a few hours together will lead to a much deeper connection than those who don’t. But it doesn’t have to be romantic or heart-lightening. Here is what so fascinating: tough times tend to have a better hardening effect on relationships. Have you ever asked why college is so important?
- There are technological helps on the way. Apps like LITTY helps you meet new people to go out with in a group setting. In turns, getting more people into your funnel, increasing your chance to finding new friends. Different from dating app, LITTY app matches you with a group of 4 to 8 to go out based on your common interests.
A new generation of apps like LITTY is combining online and offline interactions to force meaningful relationships outside of the current click-swipe culture.
