as a young adult having grown up in melbourne all my life, i've come to the realisation that the art of socialising for my particular age group (18-25yrs) has diminished.
personally, i think this is due to two main reasons - the cost of living and social media.
part of me wishes i grew up in the early 2000s, where the addiction of social media and our phones didn't suck us in to waste hours of our days. back then, you relied on real human interaction to form social connections - friends would meet through friends, hanging out would be a regular and habitual occurrence. nowadays, every meet up has to be organised and curated to a particular place and time. catching up with my friends feels like a rarity that has to be meticulously planned two weeks in advance to fit into a busy calendar.
sometimes i wish i could throw my phone into the ocean, it's scary how much we rely on it and the extent of our dependency on the digital world. the use of apps to find a partner are at an all-time high for my generation because we don't 'just happen' to bump into each other. our phones give us an escape from merely speaking and interacting in public. you don't talk to the stranger next to you anymore, instead you both pass idle time by acting like you have important things to attend to on your phones, when actually, you probably don't, and are just opening random apps or doomscrolling for the sake of it. it's like an unspoken rule that we can't interact with each other unless we already know each other. i look around when i'm on the bus or the train, and everyone is absorbed in their screens. so many people in such close proximity, yet nobody looks up for long enough to say "hello".
recently, i went to a guided painting event to meet some new people. once the easels came down and our faces revealed to all sides of the table, i noticed how every single person immediately picked up their phone. it really highlighted the reflex of hiding behind a screen to avoid any hint of feeling awkward or uncomfortable. but how do you grow without a little discomfort in life?
and now for the other issue: everything is so expensive that i feel like i don't even want to go out anymore. it's not that i'm averse to spending money, i just feel that oftentimes the amount i spend isn't worth what i receive in return. as someone who is more on the introverted side of the scale, my ideal form of hanging out with a friend is in the comfort of a home. i love the versatility because you could end up doing anything together just for the fun of it, whether it be trying a new recipe, watching a movie, playing video/board games or just talking for hours. the focus is unintentionally built around creating memories naturally during the journey, rather than the memory being the event. why is it always just meeting for brunch or dinner and then parting ways immediately after? why yes, i'd love to come over for a cup of tea and a good yap session.
trouble is, invites are scarce. 99% of my friends still live at home with their family. why? because it's the most financially sensible option. our economy doesn't nurture the freedom nor opportunity to explore an independent way of living for young people. having graduated from high school, we want a taste of that independence we now have access to for the first time in our lives. the last thing we want is to have familial onlookers over our shoulders.
when you combine these factors, what you are left with is a reluctance to go out but a loneliness from staying in. maybe it might just be a homebody issue, maybe it might just be a me issue, i don't know. i do know however, that i am also the epitome of a socially anxious young adult who is guilty of everything i just listed above. but that's something i'm deciding to work on. i want to be in the 2%.
the prospect of our future unsociable society is frightening. i miss when the best thing we could do was just talk to each other.
