I never imagined I’d have no social life in my 20s – but I’m fine with it

If you asked me a few years ago to picture how my twenties would look, I’d have imagined a diary full of after-work drinks, spontaneous weekends away and a group chat that never went quiet. The reality now, at the age of 24, is that I live three hours away from my closest friends and see them just once a year, some even less. And although this feels controversial to admit having such little face-time with friends, I am completely fine with it. After moving from Buckinghamshire to Cheshire, my friendships changed. There’s no “fancy coffee tomorrow?” texts, morning walks or weekend shopping, it’s a constant battle of co-ordinating annual leave months in advance with plans that never come to fruition. If I judged my friendships by how often I physically saw people, I’d conclude that I don’t have much of a social life at all. Shorts We’re constantly told that Britain, specifically my generation, are in the grip of a loneliness epidemic. The “friendship recession” has become a phrase used to describe Gen Zers struggling to build and maintain close relationships, more so than other ages. According to the latest State of Friendship report, one in 10 Britons reported having no close friends at all and Gen Z were twice as likely as the over-70s to experience chronic loneliness. Young adults are supposedly the most disconnected in history. Yet recently a new narrative has been emerging on TikTok and Instagram through “loneliness influencers”. Videos are filled with creators romanticising solo dates, celebrating cancelled plans, talking about “protecting their peace” and insisting that having one or two close friends is enough. Clips posted about spending Saturday nights alone are attracting millions of views. Rather than feeling bad for a quiet social life, young adults are starting to embrace it. I’m one of them. I love my own company, but I wouldn’t class myself as lonely. Recently I am beginning to wonder whether we’ve confused being lonely with simply being alone. Professor Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Oxford, says loneliness is less about the number of people around us and more about the quality of our relationships. “You can be lonely in a crowd,” he says. My closest friendships now exist through voice notes every few weeks, sharing random memes and infrequent catch-ups. Only recently did I find out that one of my best friends at home bought a puppy six months ago. I responded to her with an image of the puppy I had bought three months ago. We don’t keep tabs on each other’s lives, saving it for a once or twice a year catch-up in the same room, but our friendship is still there. I’m not alone in this. One 27-year-old tells me that she has one close friend and sees her every three months. “I spend most days on my own and that’s what my life is built around,” she says. “I can choose what I want to do, and when I see her it feels special, we have a lot to say.” My sister, aged 20, has no close friends, and has never had a big friendship group. She lives close enough to see people more often than I do but, as she puts it, she enjoys her own company and will mostly cancel plans if she makes them as she “can’t be bothered”. Like her, I have no desire to fill my evenings with seeing other people, my social battery has reduced with age, I get bored with most small talk. It seems plenty of people feel the same. Influencer Tam Kaur, who has more than 700,000 followers on TikTok, posts her solo dates, including going for coffee, meals and visiting art galleries. Her videos regularly receive over 50,000 views, with comments agreeing with her that being alone is a form of self-love. Others are filled with comments like: “My social battery runs out so quickly”, or talk about regularly cancelling plans with friends. Dunbar says “a break [from friends] is certainly as good as a rest. The social whirlwind is quite stressful, especially if you’re engaged at full pace with parties every week. But if you don’t see your friends for more than three months, you may have difficulty reconvening them. They are likely to have moved on. “It’s fine for influencers to say how wonderful it is to be alone but they are probably extroverts and extroverts are happy to have more friends of weaker quality because they have the social confidence to butterfly around.” Of course, the other side is shown online too; alongside people embracing being alone are countless others posting about friendship break-ups, struggling to make friends after university or feeling isolated during their twenties. The loneliness statistics among the younger generation, that have been linked to poorer mental health, cannot be dismissed, but there’s also a difference between having no meaningful relationships and not wanting your diary filled with plans. For years ,social media felt like it encouraged us to compare ourselves with other people’s friendship groups, holidays and birthday dinners. A profile filled with group images looked like proof you were popular, and for the first year living in Manchester I mourned the feeling of having no friends around, feeling a hint of jealousy when I saw these big groups online. Now that there has been a noticeable shift: people like me are becoming more honest about having smaller circles, and rejecting the idea that adulthood should involve maintaining dozens of friendships at once, more people are admitting that they’re fine, even happier. I’m intrigued to know whether that has been a genuine cultural change or this is simply another social media trend but I, for one, am not lonely. I think we’ve become too obsessed with quantity over quality, and, no, I don’t have regular contact with my friends, but I know I could call them if I needed to. Dunbar says the optimum number of the type of friends that you can cry to is five, although it can vary between men (four to five) and women (five to six). “We see some hint that having more than five friends is detrimental for health, almost certainly because you spread your social capacity and time to invest in friends too thin among them, and we know that means that friendships are of lower emotional quality.” I can’t say I have five best friends that I’d call myself but the two I do have back home I enjoy seeing. When we do eventually get together, it’s one of my favourite things to do. We spend hours catching up on everything we’ve missed, usually wondering why we don’t make it happen more often but the “we’ll do this sooner next time” never happens. If anything, seeing each other so infrequently makes me appreciate that time even more. Dunbar tells me it is important to not let these phases of no communication go on too long, though. “Social skills are like muscles, if you don’t use them you lose them,” he says. Luckily, I haven’t become a complete hermit that lacks the ability to have a conversation. I live with my boyfriend, although he works long hours and I’m often at home by myself, and I speak to many people for work. Of course, we all need people, it’s not to say we need no connection but I’ve realised that doesn’t have to mean a diary packed with plans. Do I sometimes wonder whether I should make more of an effort? Yes. There are moments when I wish my closest friends lived around the corner, rather than three hours away for the convenience and spontaneity but I no longer feel lonely. I might not have the big group chat I pictured a few years ago, but I’m happier now with my quiet social life because it doesn’t automatically make it a lonely one. Despite what social media once had me jealous of, I’d rather spend most evenings alone than have 100 people to brunch with for Instagram.