As kids, friendship often felt like an accident of proximity: You bonded with the girl you sat next to in math class, the neighbor down the street, and the soccer teammates you saw on Wednesday afternoons. But “it’s much harder to meet new people the older we get,” Suzanne Degges-White, PhD, LCPC, chair of the department of counseling and higher education at Northern Illinois University College of Education, tells SELF. “And when we buy into the belief that we should all easily be able to make friends, struggling to do so can seem embarrassing.”
This helps explain the rise of a modern-day solution: friendship apps. Much like dating apps, these platforms promise to make finding your next platonic go-to a little easier. Perhaps the most well-known one is Bumble BFF, which used to exist within Bumble’s dating app but recently relaunched as a standalone platform. Other popular options include Meetup, Yubo, and Nextdoor—along with more localized services like 222 and RealRoots, which match small groups of people for organized, real-life meetups.
Clearly, there’s demand for something that can help us meet new people. But if the technology is here—and our desire is real—why, then, is making one new, true friend in adulthood still so difficult? The answer, experts say, is more complicated than any algorithm.
The benefits of friendship apps
For apps like Bumble BFF, their biggest strength is simple: “They give you access to people who are also open to developing some sort of relationship,” Jeffrey Hall, PhD, professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas and director of the Relationships and Technology Lab, tells SELF. That clarity can be a game-changer, considering most people have no way of knowing if someone is looking to make new friends—or if they’re just being polite. (That uncertainty, Dr. Hall says, is what keeps most folks from branching out in the first place.)
Many apps even go a step further, matching strangers based on shared interests instead of just age or location. “When there’s something that brings you joy—like running, cooking, watching a certain type of show—it removes the stress of having to ‘make conversation’ with new people since you’re able to immerse yourself in an activity instead,” Dr. Degges-White adds.
The major challenges of finding friends online
Friendship apps are still finding their footing, and much of the stigma—and questions around their success—comes down to how new they still are.
“You have to remember that societally, we voiced a similar set of concerns back when online dating apps and sites became popular,” Dr. Hall points out. “That only people who were desperate or unsuccessful were relying on these platforms.”
But even if the cultural hesitation fades, there are a few hurdles unique to building platonic bonds online. Here are some of the biggest challenges experts have been seeing.
1. There aren’t obvious benchmarks in friendship.
According to Jess Carbino, PhD, former sociologist for Tinder and Bumble, “there are clear indicators to delineate the degree of commitment in romantic relationships.” Those milestones usually look like going from making plans twice a week to having “the talk” about exclusivity to eventually defining the relationship.
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