Finding Connection in the Absence of Traditional Workplaces

Nayomi Mbunga had always dreamed of living in a big city, and was thrilled when she landed a tech job in Toronto at the age of 24. However, she faced challenges in making friends due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Mbunga’s job started remotely in January 2022, and she spent the first few months in isolation. While she got along well with her roommates, she wanted to expand her social circle. Mbunga felt limited to remote work and home to meet potential friends, and didn’t feel comfortable reaching out to strangers on social media. Despite being sociable, Mbunga felt out of practice in cultivating relationships due to the pandemic.

Building a social network is crucial for early career workers, particularly in a new city without established connections. These friends can provide support during job crises and personal moments, and may even become lifelong friends. However, making friends as an adult can be challenging, particularly for Gen Z. Traditional opportunities to meet people through work have been limited by the shift towards hybrid, distributed, or remote working models.

According to experts, social circles have generally decreased in size due to the pandemic, and some individuals have been unable to establish social networks altogether. As a result, young people are seeking alternative methods of making friends. Gen Z, who have grown up with social media, are utilizing new platforms to build sustainable and meaningful relationships in ways previous generations did not. Young workers are becoming more innovative in how they form connections.

In April 2022, Mbunga discovered a TikTok video posted by Chloe Bow, a former government worker who had become a content creator, discussing the topic of friendships. Bow was organizing events for a new group called Toronto Girl Social, and Mbunga followed her and signed up for an upcoming movie night, despite feeling nervous. Mbunga describes the experience as fun and notes that everyone was in the same situation – anxious and attending the event alone – which helped break the ice. She reflects, “It was probably the best thing that I’ve done because I’ve just met so many people now from it.”

“We see ourselves reflected in our friends.”

Across Generation Z, the Covid-19 pandemic presented an unprecedented challenge for forming friendships. Younger Gen Zers in school were faced with periods of isolation and disruption during lockdowns, while older Gen Zers entering the workforce found themselves cut off from the opportunity to meet new colleagues under normal circumstances. According to Joyce Chuinkam, Senior Research Manager at Los Angeles-based market research agency Talk Shoppe, the pandemic disrupted the consistency of school and work, which were traditionally “consistent shared experiences” for young adults in past generations. “Many people, specifically Gen Zers entering the workforce, haven’t necessarily had the experience of being able to make friends in the typical way, and are starting a new job for the first time where they don’t know anyone,” explains Miriam Kirmayer, a clinical psychologist and friendship expert based in Montréal, Canada.

Research shows that the pandemic has taken a toll on Gen Z’s sense of connection. Janice McCabe, an associate sociology professor at Dartmouth College, conducted interviews with students at three universities in New Hampshire, US, in 2016 to study how early friendships play out through their lives. After conducting a second wave of interviews in 2021, as her participants were entering the workforce, she saw how the pandemic had negatively affected their ability to sustain existing friendships and make new ones. “Making new friends was really tough [during the pandemic], so networks across the board were shrinking,” she says.

This lack of social connections can have a negative impact on anyone’s well-being, but it could not come at a worse time for Gen Z. They are currently navigating periods of immense change in their lives, such as graduating from school, relocating to new cities, commencing new jobs, and entering the workforce – often all of the above. “With all of these changes, they require community in their new environments,” says Chuinkam. Moreover, they need to learn through new experiences, she adds, “forming new friendships aids in this process – exposing them to something entirely novel and distinct.”

Being Creative in Finding Friends

This situation is not lost on Gen Zers, who are acutely aware of their limited social networks and are exploring innovative ways to build the kinds of friendships that previous generations may have found more readily in places like offices. According to Talk Shoppe’s research, Gen Z is more open than millennials to making new friends online through friendship apps like Bumble BFF and Facebook groups. However, apps can be intimidating since they often facilitate one-on-one meetings, which can put pressure on a first meeting akin to a first date, as study participants have noted. Gen Z feels that their friend-making “odds are higher” when they meet through Facebook groups, which often revolve around shared hobbies and provide a more comfortable way to meet people than the one-on-one experience of an app.

While many young people are open to these approaches, existing methods of forging connections do not work for all Gen Zers. Some have developed their own apps or online-based hubs to make new friends in a challenging social environment. For example, during the 2020 school year, Jamie Lee, then a student at Columbia University in New York City, was looking for ways to connect authentically with her peers online while studying remotely. That summer, she launched the beta version of her app, Flox, where groups of friends could sign up together to meet other groups of friends. To Lee, this felt like a more authentic way for Gen Z to approach friend-making since people tend to be more genuine around the friends they already have. Meeting new people as a group would allow them to be themselves and remove some of the anxiety from the friend-making process.