How Millennials Socialize and Why We’re Terrible at It
I’m extroverted. I love being around people and relationships are important to me. But as a millennial sunsetting on his 20's, it’s getting harder and harder to get people together. Rallying my friends means starting a text message chain, emailing people, and possibly starting a Facebook event if the event size calls for it. Then everyone consults calendars and/or checks with significant others. Some are good about responding to invitations whether or not they can make it. Others say they’ll be there and then don’t show up. (I know… I know. I’ve done it too.)
The amount of steps it takes us to get from here to dinner with friends is growing increasingly aggravating. This whole communication cycle is bogged down with frustrating pieces. Is it just because we’re getting too busy? Is technology getting in the way somehow? Is there something else going on here? Aziz Ansari nails it on the head in his recent standup routine. After watching it, ask yourself: Do I know people like that? Have I been that person before? And, most importantly, can we be better than this?
Never content to just let things be, a couple good friends and I set out to determine:
(1) what are the frustrations people have with the way we interact, and (2) can anything be done to significantly improve the problems we’re facing?
We interviewed and surveyed over 100 millennials. Here’s what we found.
Who Participated
The interviews and surveys took place between November 14, 2014 and April 2, 2015. We had a total of 102 participants. (Thanks again to everyone who participated!) Here’s how the basic stats broke down:
- Gender: Split almost evenly; 51% female to 49% male.
- Age: Pew Research Center defines “millennials” as anyone born between 1981 and 2000. Median age range for participants in our study was 26–29 (59% of participants). The other two most represented age ranges were 30–33 (24%) and 22–25 (14%). Individuals falling outside the generational categorization were excluded, though the deductions below may be generalizable.
- Residence: 59% of participants lived in urban environments. San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles areas had the best representation with 37%, 17%, and 13% respectively. About 37% of participants lived in suburban environments scattered around the U.S. Participants lived in as distant places as Oslo, Norway.
It’s worth noting that participants spanned only a degree or two outside our own social networks, which is diverse in some respects and homogeneous in others. We kept it as well balanced as we reasonably could. Take the information below with that in mind.
How We Socialize
The goal of this exercise is to make it easier for millennials to get together in real life with the people they care about. To that end, we needed to figure out how each person organizes his/her social life and to identify common frustration points to improve upon. So, we sat down and asked our participants. Both the interview and survey questions had open narrative answers so we could capture their frustrations accurately. We quickly identified two factors that differentiated how we like to socialize.
Factor 1: Quick Get-Togethers v. Planned Events
We looked at the size of each participant’s real life social groups, how frequently they get together, what they do, where they go, and how they communicate with their groups when trying to arrange plans. The answer was consistently: “It depends!” “Ok, depends on what?” “What type of events are we talking about?”
Participants broke their social gatherings into two categories, which we later defined as:
- Quick Get-Togethers: The internal trigger for these events is usually boredom or a longing to see a specific person or group of people. To alleviate this feeling, they typically send a quick request, usually via text messaging or similar service, to see if they can find a time in the next few hours or days to meet up. Invitations for Quick Get-Togethers usually don’t extend beyond 9 days in advance and are time sensitive. Groups for these events are usually 8 or less people and tend to be a core group that meet with some regularity. They don’t seem to be purposefully limited in who can join these events. Rather, that’s just how large groups tend to get on short notice.
- Planned Events: The trigger here is usually something external: a friend’s birthday, visitors from out of town, holiday, or something that’s given cause to celebrate. These Planned Events tend to be much larger in scope and detail and usually fall on weekends to maximize likelihood of common availability. Planning usually starts at least a week in advance. Since there tends to be more details for recipients to track and refer back to, emails and Facebook Events are more likely to be used to spread the word than a messaging service.
It’s worth noting that there is a third situation that takes a hybrid approach, but only a few participants reported it. We’ll call it the business development use case. It’s where business bleeds into your social life. It’s the case where people use email to coordinate semi-business related meetings within a short time frame, or, alternatively, text each other for meetings a week or more in advance. Since the enterprising use case isn’t the core problem we’re trying to solve at this point, we’ll table that discussion. I would suggest reading Bo Ren’s recent Medium article to learn more about the personal implications of merging your social and business lives.
Takeway: The norms and expectations around getting people together for social events generally fall into two categories: Quick Get-Togethers or Planned Events.
Factor 2: Age Makes a Difference
Younger millennials (18–25 year olds) are indeed more socially connected and active than their older peers. They join more social organizations, develop new social networks more readily, and are more fluid with how they spend their social time. It seems since they have less responsibilities, younger millennials are much more easily “bored” and able to arrange Quick Get-Togethers within a short time frame.
As people get older (26+), the size of social groups shrink and social meetups become less frequent. Most participants noted their social calendars tend to be squeezed out by other commitments. Full-time employment leaves little time to socialize during the week, and remaining time on the weekends is usually booked a week or so in advance, especially as people begin to pair off and merge social calendars. People in the 26+ range more frequently participate in a Planned Event and less often in a Quick Get-Together.
Takeaway: The younger you are, the more social and spontaneous you’re likely to be. When you hit 26, you’ll have to start scheduling fun.
The Problem: Poor Communication
Despite differences in type of event (Quick Get-Togethers and Planned Events) and phase of life the participants were in, there was one salient problem:
“Getting everyone together is like herding cats.”
One participant summarized it as a problem of:
“When people don’t respond, when people say they are coming but you know they probably won’t or when the group is super indecisive about what to do, where to go, and what to eat.”
I think most of us can relate to that. If you value the people you’re rallying enough to want to see them, chances are you don’t think they’re acting maliciously when they flake. Most participants chalked it up to a lack of consideration or willingness to put forth effort. Unpacking the quote above, there are 3 problems driving this central frustration. Let’s figure out if we can solve them.
Problem #1: People Don’t Respond
Our rationale for not responding is probably worth a study on its own. It seems to be a combination of procrastination (“I’ll check the calendar in a minute.”) and ADHD-fueled forgetfulness (“Oh, look at what Product Hunt tweeted!”). But as an organizer, it can be intensely personal and insulting to invite someone to hangout and receive nothing in return.
Unfortunately, we haven’t figured out how to make you more popular with your friends or improve their memories. But, by minimizing the amount of effort it takes to respond and tying in a few social psychology principles (read Nir Eyal’s Hooked if you want to learn more), we can help motivate people to be more responsive and timely. I think we can check Problem #1 off as improvable.
Problem #2: People Lie and Exaggerate
One article I’ve come across blames this on a “cycle of flaking”, where we implicitly give each other permission to flake by doing it ourselves.
“For every ‘Sorry, can’t make it!’ text we receive, we likely send two of our own. Giving ourselves permission to stay home with Netflix or take up a more appealing plan can be the most luxurious, freeing moment of our day.”
Aziz Ansari thinks it’s because we’re “the least lonely generation, the least isolated generation.” We have so many options in front of us and know so much about each others’ goings-on, it’s hard to decide which relationships need to be tended to by meeting in person.
There’s not much we can do by way of moral conditioning to make people more honest, but we can provide more accurate information to those who need it and make it simpler for people who are more lazy than dishonest. So, there’s a chance we could make an impact on Problem #2 as well.
Problem #3: Coordination Means Effort
People who are interested in getting together have to hammer out details. Figuring out common availability, central locations, and shared preferences then becomes a matter of long-back-and-forth text/email chains. Spreadsheets get passed around, and then buried under follow-up emails. Some of our more passive participants shared that “it’s easier to say ‘I don’t care’ than be tasked with searching Yelp for a place everyone will like.” Sadly, many millennials we spoke to also think When2Meet and Doodle are still cutting-edge solutions.
If this group indecision stems from laziness and good consumer technology is supposed to make life more convenient, then better suited technology is the answer! Looks like Problem #3 is checked off too.
Ok, so step 1 is admitting we have a problem (or several). I think we’ve done that. Let’s simplify it as:
Takeaway: Communication around social events is unreliable because many of us are forgetful procrastinators with too many options, and technology is poorly suited for how we socialize.
But there’s hope…
The Fix: Getting Savvy
After deconstructing how our generation interacts and where we stand to improve, my partners and I started taking these problems to task full time. We’re designing something to reduce the effort needed to coordinate both Quick Get-Togethers and Planned Events and make the whole experience more engaging. It’s simple and sophisticated. It’s a platform called Savvy.
If you’d like an invitation to join the test community for our impending iPhone release, you can sign up here.
Until then, stay Savvy!
We’d love to hear your thoughts on what we gathered. What problems do you face when getting people together? How do you think we can best fix these everyday annoyances? Email us at: team@staysavvy.co
