the millennial friend group crisis

college-based friend groups vs. neighborhood-based friend groups

Imagine your grandparents' life trajectory. They probably married young. Probably to someone they already knew. Possibly to someone they knew their entire life. They stayed fairly close to home. And when they didn’t, they were probably surrounded by people the same age, who were marrying at about the same time: early twenties for women, mid-to-late twenties for men. And they probably had children young, too. Again, around the same time as their friends. Their social lives were defined by geography, community, and life stage. They lived in neighborhood-based friend groups. And to paraphrase what Kat Dee said to me recently:

Maturity was evenly distributed.

Compare to today: College has become the Sorting Hat for friend groups. Afterwards, blown to the four corners by education, career, and family and enabled by cellphones, social media, and mass affluence, friends groups remain in contact regardless of where they are 'based': group chats, reunion vacations, and Instagram courtesy likes, maintain intimacy at a distance.

For those who remained geographically close to one another, the millennial social life—especially the urban, upwardly-mobile sort, which for better or for worse I am mostly writing about—is driven by events, partying, dating drama, career pivots. When the exploratory twenties end and the destination weddings begin, usually sometime around 33, the college friend ground has spent its first post-college decade still living more or less like college students. Roommates and all.

This is where the friend group crisis begins.

Whereas new opportunities (or tragedies) may have caused your grandparents to move. The next neighborhood, the next church, the next bowling league, the next bridge club was populated by people broadly the same as those that populated your last one: people with kids and jobs and marriages. The neighborhood-based friend group was a strong bond, but inelastic, easily broken by a cross-country move. Yet, it could be easily replicated in any geography because it was always based on who you were in the present. Again: a neighborhood-based friend group is defined by geography, community, and life stage.

Today, that’s not the case.

The bond of the college-based friend group is a weaker, but flexible. It’s stretched for years through catch-up dinners during business trips, by pebbling memes back and forth over text, on the dance floor at the class reunion. Since it’s not based in geography, in theory, it shouldn’t have to be replicated. It should endure, regardless of moves and marriages and motherhood.

The tricky part is, since the bond of the college-based friend group is based on who you were in the past, it can’t really be recreated. It really is a one of a kind. That makes a social life built around it special indeed, but also very fragile.

If the neighborhood-based friend group of yore was Coca-Cola—available anywhere and, not to be too cynical, replaceable—ours are rare vintages of wines. There may only be one Class of 2009 on the market. Do we want friendships to be ubiquitous and easily available or rare and difficult to attain?

In surveys, we see the consequences of this over and over again. People have less friends than ever and report they struggle to make new ones. Socializing outside the home has cratered since COVID.

And in a more ephemeral way, I’ve noticed that millennials in particular are obsessed with whether their immediate social circle, or even more broadly, their adjacent broader age cohort, are "growing up."

"Grow up!" was an epithet parents used to fling at surly teens. Now it’s a peer-to-peer complaint. It’s certainly been hurled at me. Not entirely without reason…

American society increasingly expects friendships to be formed in one four-year crucible that spans your late teenage years and your early twenties. And it expects these friendships to remain functional regardless of geography, marital status, children, politics, career, or lifestyle. Is it any wonder people are frustrated when those hurdles begin picking off members of their friend group one by one? Especially if the hurdle in particular is the ephemeral and preferential lifestyle?

Hence the exhortation: "Just grow up!"

But friend-group defectors come in and all shapes and sizes. Here are just a few: