Swipe right...for friendships
- Kate Moore
- Feb 22, 2017
- 3 min read
All illustrations on this page by Daniel Tyminski
We've had Tinder, Bumble and Happn. All dating apps which allow you to hook up with sexual or romantic partners in the close vicinity. Now the tide has turned and we are officially moving onto grown-ass lady friend swiping.
Finding, maintaining and nurturing female friendships in London can be difficult. For starters, once you enter your 20s, many of your friends begin to couple up. Unlike the beginning of university when all your mates would go on nights out in Shoreditch or cuddle up to watch a film in your dinky flat, now the panicked coupling before everyone hits the big 3-0 means your old pal who used to dance on a sticky table with you is permanently glued to her boyfriend’s side.
So, friend apps are now a thing. ‘Zone’ offers the chance to bring your ‘wolfpack’ together with other friendship groups to meet for drinks, or other fun sober activities. The dating app ‘Bumble’ is also catering for the growing market. Working similarly to ‘Tinder’, it allows you to swipe on new buddies, but crucially you only have 24 hours for either user to start a conversation before the connection expires.
Arguably, this type of technology can lead to some creepy interactions. The built-in iPhone feature ‘Find Friends’ is a terrifying opportunity to track your friends’ whereabouts at all times. But these apps can also make you feel safer. ‘Companion’ is a useful tool which allows friends to follow your journey home, and flag emergency services when you’re in a dangerous situation.
Despite these pluses there is one big question. Is looking for platonic pals online pretty un-cool?
Well, the answer is no. Similarly to dating apps where you can find out a little about your future date to make sure you at least have something in common or an attraction, friendship apps can do the same. Instead of awkwardly getting to the middle of a drunken conversation with a girl while trying to fix your eyeliner in a club toilet and finding out she agrees with ‘some’ of Trump’s immigration policies; you can have a bit of pre-emptive understanding in their bio and look forward to some no strings attached bonding.
Yes, social media can be isolating. What millennial hasn’t found herself friendless or flaked-on at some point, thumbing through her 500 Facebook friend’s statuses?
But now we can use this new technology to the best of its potential by becoming proactive and making real life connections. Loneliness in front of a phone screen can bring us together, like World of Warcraft fans congregating in village town halls on a Friday night.
A recent study by the Mental Health Foundation found 18 to 34-year-olds were more likely to feel lonely than the over-55s.
London can be lonely. There are so many exhausted people, carrying their own busy parcel of pressure. It can be a huge amount of effort to pick yourself up on a Saturday night to make new connections, instead of slouching in front of another episode of Strictly Come Dancing in your ill-fitting pyjamas at 6pm.
It may be an easy rut but we can’t always hide behind the comfort of a screen. There are often times when actual, real-life small talk is required. Talk that goes further than an auto-typed, rhetorical, "how’s it going?" which, in reality, becomes more tiring than no interaction at all.
Even more unsettling is a study conducted by VICE, which posed the following question to 2,500 millennials in the UK: "What are you most scared of?" According to the results, 31 per cent of people (the majority) said their biggest fears are never finding love, beating homelessness, losing a job, and being in the middle of a terrorist attack.
Apparently everyone wants to find ‘the one’ but wouldn’t it be more sensible to nurture the other relationships in our lives, especially with the trajectory of divorce rates sky rocketing?
We're constantly bombarded with messages from media, which elevate and romanticise all aspects of marriage, sex and dating, whereas platonic love is constantly devalued. ‘Friend-zoning’ and being ‘just friends’ are commonplace terms to describe what is a much stronger connection.
Friendships can be the most rewarding and fulfilling relationships in the quarter-life-crisis stage of your life. Yes, there may be frictions with your new-found platonic conquest but that support system may outlast any guy.
In this day and age there is no excuse for sitting alone, waiting for someone on a white horse to come by. Look up from your phone, get yourself off that sofa and make it 'Happn'.
Friend apps are a fun way to make friends in a big city. If dating online is cemented as commonplace, BFF socialising apps are a solid step in shaking the taboo of taking a similar approach to friendships.
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