8 min read
From run clubs to coffee chats, young adults are finding new ways to connect in real life. But making friends after college remains harder than it should be.
Your college group chat might still be active. Friends share memes, send occasional life updates, and promise to catch up soon. But everyone's busy, some have moved away, and finding a time to meet can take weeks.
Meanwhile, you've started a new job or moved to a new city, and you've realized that making friends isn't quite as effortless as it used to be. Without classes, clubs, or shared schedules bringing people together, even meeting someone new requires a little planning.
It's a familiar experience for many young adults, and it helps explain why real-life social activities are attracting renewed interest. Running clubs, community dinners, book clubs, and casual meetups are giving people ways to expand their social circles beyond the friends they already have.
For Gen Z, this doesn't necessarily mean abandoning social media. It's more about finding opportunities for the kinds of connections that are difficult to build entirely through a screen.
Why Making Friends After College Feels Harder
Think about how you made friends in school. Most friendships probably didn't start with a formal introduction or a carefully planned meetup. You sat next to someone in class, worked on a project together, or happened to eat lunch at the same table. Over time, those small interactions turned into friendships.
College makes meeting new people easier because it puts you in the same places, around the same people, on a regular basis. Once you graduate, that structure largely disappears. Your coworkers might be at different stages of life, your friends may live across the city, and meeting people outside your existing circle becomes something you have to actively pursue.
Interestingly, the idea that Gen Z is simply a generation without friends doesn't tell the whole story.
According to YPulse's 2026 Friendship and Community Report, most Gen Z and Millennials surveyed have multiple close friends. The research also highlights how important school environments are for forming friendships, and how maintaining relationships and making new ones can become more challenging after graduation.
This distinction matters because you don't have to feel lonely to want a bigger social circle. You might have great friends but still wish you knew more people in your city, had someone to explore new restaurants with, or could meet others who share your professional interests.
The challenge isn't necessarily a lack of people to connect with. It's the lack of natural opportunities for those connections to happen.
Why Young Adults Are Choosing In-Person Connection
There's growing evidence that young adults are seeking more opportunities to socialize in person.
According to Eventbrite's 2026 Social Study, 79% of surveyed 18-to-35-year-olds planned to attend more events in 2026, while 74% of Gen Z respondents considered in-person experiences more important than digital ones.
You can see the appeal in activities like run clubs, pottery classes, and community dinners. They offer something that traditional networking events often struggle with: a shared experience that makes conversation easier.
At a running club, you can talk about the route, how long you've been running, or where everyone goes for coffee afterward. At a cooking class, you're already working on something together. There's less pressure to make an impressive introduction or explain why you're approaching someone.
These activities also create opportunities to see the same people again, which matters when you're trying to build a friendship rather than simply meet someone once.
But organized social activities aren't for everyone. Some people have unpredictable schedules, while others don't particularly enjoy group settings. And if you're working full-time, committing to a new hobby just to expand your social circle might feel like another obligation.
Sometimes, meeting someone for coffee or lunch is a better place to start.
Start With Coffee or Lunch
There's a reason people have been inviting each other for coffee long before networking apps existed. It's casual, relatively affordable, and doesn't require much commitment. You can meet for half an hour, talk about whatever interests you, and go back to your day.
A lunch conversation also feels different from a formal networking event. Instead of moving between groups and introducing yourself to as many people as possible, you get the chance to learn about one person, ask questions, and see where the conversation goes.
For someone who has recently moved to Toronto, that might mean meeting another person who's new to the city. For a recent graduate, it could be a conversation with someone working in an industry they're interested in. Two people working remotely might simply enjoy having someone new to grab lunch with.
Make Room for Friendship in Your Routine
If you're trying to make friends after college, the most practical starting point is to look for opportunities that fit into your existing routine. You don't necessarily need to join five clubs or fill every weekend with social events. If you already enjoy running, find a group that meets regularly. If you're interested in startups, attend a local founder event. And if you enjoy discovering restaurants, inviting someone new to lunch can be an easy way to start a conversation.
It also helps to be specific when reaching out. People often say they'll catch up sometime, but those conversations rarely go anywhere without a concrete plan. Suggesting a café and a couple of possible times gives the other person something specific to respond to.
Of course, meeting someone once isn't the same as becoming friends. Research by University of Kansas professor Jeffrey Hall suggests that developing a casual friendship typically requires around 40–60 hours of time spent together, while closer friendships take substantially longer.
That's why following up matters. If you had a good conversation, send a quick thank-you message, share something relevant to what you discussed, or suggest meeting again. Friendships tend to develop through repeated interactions, and someone has to take the initiative to make that second meeting happen.
The difficulty, especially when you're new to a city, is knowing who to reach out to in the first place.
How AI Can Help You Take the First Step
Technology has made discovering people remarkably easy. You can find professionals from almost any industry on LinkedIn, join online communities around specific interests, or connect with people through social media.
But discovering someone interesting and actually meeting them are still two different things.
You might spend an evening browsing profiles, identifying people you'd like to talk to, and writing introductory messages. Even if someone responds, you still need to figure out whether there's mutual interest, find a convenient time, and coordinate a place to meet.
AI has the potential to make some of that process easier, particularly when it comes to understanding what people are looking for and identifying relevant connections.
Imagine you've recently moved to a new city and want to meet people who work in technology or are building their own businesses. Instead of searching through hundreds of profiles, you could describe what you're interested in and have an AI agent help you discover people who might be worth meeting.
That's the idea behind LunchME, an AI networking app that helps people connect through coffee and lunch invitations.
Rather than focusing on collecting online connections, LunchME helps users discover people based on their interests and goals, then invite them to meet in person. Some invitations are free, while others include an offer to treat someone to coffee, bubble tea, or lunch as a gesture of appreciation for their time.
For example, someone considering a career in product design might want to meet an experienced designer and learn what the job is actually like. A founder might want to exchange ideas with another entrepreneur, while a newcomer to the city might be looking to expand their professional circle.
The AI helps with the introduction, but what happens afterward is up to the people involved. The conversation might lead to useful advice, a professional opportunity, or simply meeting someone interesting.
You can learn more about how LunchME works.
There are limits to what AI can do here. It can't guarantee that two people will get along, and it certainly can't manufacture a genuine friendship. What it can do is reduce some of the effort involved in finding relevant people and taking that first step toward meeting them.
For people who already spend much of their day online, that's an appealing use of technology: making it easier to spend some of that time with other people instead.
Turn One Conversation Into a Connection
The renewed interest in offline socializing doesn't mean young people are going to stop using social media or abandon their online communities. Those platforms remain useful for maintaining friendships, discovering events, and staying connected with people who live far away. But they don't always make it easy to build new relationships with people who live nearby.
For someone who has just graduated, moved to a new city, or started working remotely, meeting new people can feel surprisingly complicated. Yet it doesn't always require attending a large event or committing to an entirely new activity. Sometimes, it can be as ordinary as inviting someone to coffee during your lunch break, following up with a person you met last week, or finally accepting an invitation you've been putting off.
Some of the most valuable relationships in our lives begin with conversations we never expected to have. The more opportunities we create for those conversations, the more likely we are to meet someone who makes a difference.
