“Be a villager…just for your people”: Why friendship isn’t the antidote to young people’s loneliness
by Grace Dada for The 44 North, Contributing Writer - Politics
The loneliness crisis needs new messaging.
“Be a villager.”
“Find your people.”
“Be a girl’s girl.”
“The price of community is inconvenience.”
This kind of incisive discourse has permeated the public sphere and digital landscape since the pandemic. Initially, like many of my peers, I lapped it up eagerly, adopted each new phrase and the sentiments behind it, and embraced apps for friendship and weekly dinners. They delivered on their promise to introduce me to friendly faces and proved to be solid options for moving to a different city or entering a new life stage: University, postgraduate, and working life.
Several years later, connection discourse has become debate fodder for social media platforms, fuelling short-form video content and best-selling books alike. Friendship experts like Danielle Bayard Jackson, for example, have amassed audiences of hundreds of thousands on TikTok and Instagram with tips to help break down the skills and complexities of building and sustaining friendships.
That this kind of content resonates is no surprise. It offers a welcome oasis from the hamster wheel-adjacent society many young people feel they’ve been unwillingly ushered into. It also marks a shift from the clear-cut, vertical path for happiness—which was perhaps once more strictly defined by academic prowess, upward career trajectories and nuclear families—and refocuses attention laterally, towards those within our inner circles.
With today’s housing prices skyrocketing (mortgage payments in Toronto are up 56 percent since 2014, according to Fraser Institute) and wages remaining stagnant, young Canadians may never be able to afford their own houses. Potentially locked out of traditional markers of success, setting their sights on the relationships around them is one way to rearrange the texture of their lives and reclaim agency.
But these days, friendship-centred discourse is more likely to earn a suspicious eye from me than an eager buy-in.
I’ve grown dubious of the overly neat packaging it often arrives in, the way that it doesn’t quite seem to answer all the questions it promises to. Friendship alone cannot mend young Canadians’ deep, infrastructure-sized loneliness, and proposing as much is the equivalent of the flimsy, cherry-coloured ribbons we ripped through on Christmas Day as children.
When it comes to loneliness and its far-reaching harms, the data is clear. The human body can endure situational hardships; social disconnectedness doesn’t appear to be one of them. Its effect parallels smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to a 2023 US Surgeon General Advisory report, and it increases the risk of depression and heart attack.
A 2024 Stats Canada survey reported that young Canadians are lonelier than older generations, with nearly one in five (17%) aged 15-24 admitting they always or often feel lonely. Yet in the same report, 82% of that age group reported that they always or often had people to count on. Paradoxically, this suggests that the high-support role of a solid inner circle of friends and family is already being filled for a significant portion of youth.
Where like-minded, shared interest groups fall short
Heard from social media, the solution to young people’s loneliness is simply stronger friendships and like-minded social interest groups. However, trends show young people are already joining sports and hobby groups, and at higher rates than pre-pandemic times.
2023 research from the Canadian Leisure & Reading Study found the percentage of online and in-person book club attendees rose from 13% in 2020 to 22% in 2023. The subsequent 2024 report showed it sitting around 34%, and adults aged 18 to 29 were the most likely to attend reading groups.
Yet, the data still shows a lonely day-to-day reality for many young Canadians. A 2025 YMCA survey showed three out of four (~74%) of young Canadians aged 18-34 say they don’t have a sense of community, and the same demographic of people believe a decline in “third spaces” is to blame. Those in the later half of their youth seem to face the worst of it, as 77% of those between 26-34 report a lack of sense of community.
As someone for whom reading groups, sports clubs, and music events have technically “worked”—as in, they’ve placed me in the same rooms as the people who have since become my dearest friends today—I’ve found there are still chasms even the bosomest of buddies cannot bridge. Our friends know, love, and understand us well. But they can’t quite scratch the itch of partaking in a wider group where your presence alone entitles you to care and support. This is a key difference between friendship and community.
I didn’t have the words to explain it at the time, but this is what I cherished so much about my early school days and the classroom environment, which slotted me into a community that felt greater than myself and my inner circle. Whether I “belonged” enough to receive the same education as my peers didn’t depend on what interests I shared or whether I was well-suited to everyone in the room. It came with enrollment.
School's reliable, somewhat indiscriminate social infrastructure mirrors what one commenter on Tashawn Dragovan’s Instagram describes below—a community built only on shared spaces, interests and identities and community meant as committed care. I’m convinced that proposing the former (finding compatible people) as a fix for loneliness caused by the latter (developing a wider supportive and structured network) only keeps the wheel spinning in the wrong direction.
Fighting young Canadians’ loneliness starts well before the hobby group or friendship forms; it should already be baked into the architecture of Canadian society. The groundwork for true community is commitment, where members’ perceived similarities aren’t the benchmark for belonging, and needs, values, and differences don’t exempt them from the right support and consideration. Simply participating is enough.
This type of care structure once came easily in religious spaces and between next-door neighbours, for example, and now takes work and intention to create. Mutual aid networks—peer-to-peer communities that exchange and share resources, and allow participants to disclose vulnerabilities, strengths, and receive support outside of a capitalist system—are a close comparison. But without the same daily or weekly care structure, they still may not quite bridge the gap.
Loneliness-washing: The newest marketing angle
In April 2026, an Inc. Magazine article by Stephanie Cartin declared community as the future of marketing. Her rationale is that it helps brands take ownership of consumer relationships. Let the profit generate itself.
Apps like Bumble BFF and Hinge also have subscription costs and paywalls for their premium products. Newer competitors like TimeLeft and RealRoots offer monthly memberships, with the latter charging hundreds of dollars for several “facilitated” in-person meetups behind their “Make New Friends Guaranteed!” slogan.
What money-hungry multinational corporations have observed is that the promise of connection makes for a compelling product, which you can turn around and sell to lonely people, gatekeeping what was once and should remain widely accessible.
For brands, they can strengthen their staying power by moving their followings offline and avoiding the game of maintaining digital audiences altogether. Consumers, on the other hand, get…connection sold back to them with interest.
Once again, young people are watching a movement, initially intended to centre and unify them, co-opted for profitable gain and used as a business model.
Be a villager for your favourite people.
The good news is that developing the kind of robust social framework needed to ease young people’s loneliness is possible, even without overpriced social clubs or membership-tiered friendship apps. It starts smaller, with a reprioritization of Stanford sociologist Mark S. Granovetter’s weak ties, or the friendly, familiar faces with one step in and one step out of our world. This includes hairdressers, baristas, next-door neighbours, and acquaintances—people with whom we interact consistently, but not necessarily deeply.
Granovetter’s research finds that prioritizing weak ties impacts several spheres of your life, even increasing one’s career odds. Alongside weak ties, intentional moves towards interacting with strangers, which is something younger generations may be less likely to do, can also help abate the loneliness crisis.
Pete Bombaci, founder of The GenWell Project, an organization that researches and advocates for Canadians’ social health, says, “For decades, we have been told not to talk to strangers, and for young kids that’s some safe advice. As we get older and a little more worldly, though, the positive effects of connecting with those we don’t know can be pretty powerful—both for you and the person you’re talking to.” The organization conducted a national survey in partnership with the University of Victoria and discovered that Canadians who greeted strangers were three times more likely to be happy than those who did not.
When we advise young people to be better villagers, there’s an additional unspoken message that keeps the sense of responsibility and commitment safely confined to the individual’s close inner circle. There is less room for/or accountability to strangers. That’s what led Canadian TikTok content creator Michelle Skidelsky to post a video saying, “I am horrified by the amount of people who genuinely think they don’t owe anyone anything,” speaking to the decline in general politeness and decorum she perceived.
Online life largely suggests that younger generations may be underestimating their first line of defence against loneliness—connecting with and showing up for strangers, and remembering how we’re all in relationship with and to one another. Including those we’re not close to.
As a child, I remember puzzling at the way my Nigerian father raved about conversations with helpful cashiers and delivery drivers, or kind deeds from a neighbour more often than even his closest friends. Years later, I see his argument: Connection is a currency worth exchanging every single time it’s offered, regardless of depth.
The dental assistant, grocer, and transport driver may not be the same people we’ll be sharing our deepest, darkest woes or celebrating our brightest days with, but they don’t have to be. They’re still on the other side of the table, holding up their end and comprising the backdrop of the cities and neighbourhoods we call home. And we must not forget: We are these people to someone else, too.
In Granovetter and The GenWell Project’s research, we find an invitation to expand our concept of the village. Be a villager for your friends and your family and your children, yes.
But what about everyone else?
Grace Dada is a writer and editor from Western Canada. She's written across fintech, wellness, and independent media, and previously founded Sorella Magazine, a digital media company for and by Black women. Her work has been published in outlets like ByBlacks.com, Shape and The Financial Diet. She holds an HBA in English and Writing & Rhetoric from the U of T. Connect with her on Instagram.
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