Woman reflects on why Gen Z is so bad at friendship: ‘There is a huge need for belonging, but very little tolerance for other people's mistakes’

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Olivia Arocena • Writer and Editor
Oct 11, 2026 9:45 AM EDT

Are the youngest generations bad at making friends, or do we just not understand them?

There are a couple of reasons why Gen Z might seem worse at relationships than previous generations. By now, we've all realized that social media has created new forms of intimacy that have reshaped how we think about relationships.

We can know what someone ate, who they're with, and what they like in real time. This can create the illusion of closeness while they're not sharing that exclusively with us, and they might not even know we're watching. The thing is, our bodies don't know the difference between a real friend we see all the time and someone we're seeing all the time, only virtually.

Social media becomes particularly interesting from this perspective because it doesn't merely allow us to communicate with one another; it changes what intimacy looks like, and what kind of relationships become possible.

Right now, there are more types of relationships than there used to be, for sure. What would be the equivalent of somebody you only interact with via likes before? It didn't exist. It also wasn't normal for us humans to have so much proximity without reciprocity as we do now with influencers or people we watch online (let's hope it's not our exes).

So social media is a machine that produces new forms of intimacy that we might be too old to understand, and we have to accept that. I'd like to encourage us to think about the possibility that new generations aren't bad at friendship; they have just created new, completely different types of it.

Think about it like this: a cellphone is a technological tool that we interact with and use to communicate and share things with other people. This creates new ways of communicating that never existed before, and those new ways of communicating create new types of feelings and relationships that didn't exist before, simply because relationships weren't affected by this new technology.

Also, the technology, the feelings, and the relationships aren't independent levels; they continually affect one another. Our feelings influence how we use the technology, then the technology influences what we do with those feelings, and finally, our actions influence what the technology shows us. All of that creates an infinite loop that produces new forms of intimacy along with new types of media and, why not, some brainrot to go along.

However, we have to point out that younger generations might be a little too influenced by a culture of disposability that has been constantly marketed to us on every medium possible over the last few years. That might affect how willing they are to work on a relationship after it produces any kind of challenge.

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    Gen Z being terrible at friendship

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  • Why is Gen Z so bad at friendship?

    Genuinely the title. I don't understand why Gen Z especially (even some Millennials if I'm being honest..) are so terrible at friendship and also relationships in general. I try my best to always
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  • show up and be there for my friends, make new friends, be intentional, etc. but it's always one-sided OR they just randomly decide to turn on me one day for whatever reason, or just ghost me and I see them on social media
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  • anyways living their lives. It's a strange phenomenon and I'm not the only one I feel has experienced it either. It's odd because Gen Z also seems so desperate for community, with no idea how to maintain or be a villager.
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  • greenVampiresucks Sometimes I feel like there is a contradiction in the way some people approach relationships today: There is a huge need for belonging, but very little tolerance for other people's mistakes, and very little willingness to do the work
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  • required to actually build a friendship. Deep friendships don't happen overnight. They require time, investment, patience, and a willingness to go through difficult periods together. It's about being there when
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  • the other person isn't particularly fun, interesting, or emotionally easy to be around. It's about talking when there is conflict, forgiving certain things, setting boundaries, adapting as people change, and, most importantly, continuing to choose that person over the years.
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    Gen Z can be strange

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  • But sometimes it seems as though relationships have become almost disposable. As long as a friend is healthy, enjoyable, interesting, and fits someone's current expectations, the friendship stays. Once there is conflict, someone makes a
    via wildflowerwanderer1
  • mistake, someone changes, someone new seems more interesting, or the relationship simply starts requiring effort, the person is discarded. Social media has probably made this worse by creating the feeling that there are endless people
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  • available to replace anyone who leaves. That can create the illusion that friends are easily replaceable. And many people seem to confuse having a large number of connections with having genuine friendships. You can have hundreds of followers and
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  • talk to several people every day, but still have no one with whom you can truly be yourself, someone you can genuinely trust. We want the village, but we don't necessarily want to do the work of being part of one.
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    An example of good friends

    Scene shown is a visual representation

  • Some say Gen Zers are too entitled; even teachers point that out, and that they have become very good at identifying toxic behaviour but less good at being flexible enough to accept humanity. That mindset can definitely stunt your capacity for intimacy, as we are all imperfect. This is the downside of being part of a constant online conversation about boundaries and new 'therapeutic' buzzwords.

    At one point, we have to accept they live in a different world and they are adapted to it; they have new types of relationships, and even though we think our own are better (and they might be), we can't do anything about it except try to raise our children with a different set of values! Still, they are going to grow up exposed to AI and all kinds of dystopian things that will affect how they interact with the world.

    We have to accept it, gentlemen; we're officially left behind!

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friendship relationship advice friends relationships entitled people karma entitled r-entitled toxic relationship relationship drama entitled people
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