Is curing loneliness that simple?

It’s no secret that many Gen Zers are lonely. They are going out less, making fewer friends, and having a worse time than generations before them, but why is that? It is easy to blame phones, and I think that might be a pretty big cause of loneliness, but I don’t think that’s the only cause. I think a lot of young people are unwilling to take the risk of putting themselves out there out of fear of being rejected by their peers, and therefore, they’re making fewer plans. 

As one of the main planners in my friend group, I try to fight my own loneliness by being the one to initiate making plans. I look up events in my city, and I can nearly intuit which events my friends would want to go to and which they wouldn’t. I realized early in my young adult life that if you sit around waiting for somebody else to invite you to something, you’re going to be waiting for a while. This is not because my friends didn’t like me or didn’t want to hang out with me, but because most people are not planners by nature. They do not have the skills or desire to reach out to the people in their lives and make specific, actionable plans for a variety of reasons. One reason is fear of rejection. If you ask your friends if they want to go to the theater and none of them want to, you might feel dejected or humiliated. Another reason is that it’s not easy. Have you tried coordinating five adults with their own social lives to find a Saturday when they’re all free and an activity they all want to do? It’s not easy. 

The dude in this story shared his unpopular opinion about friendship and plans, and it might not be as unpopular as he thought.