Social Skills and Making Friends News – Edition #4
Welcome to edition #4 of our new series, where we share with you the latest resources we’ve found on social skills, making friends, and more. In this edition, we’ll talk about how motherhood (or any life changes) can be lonely, introduce you to some great new apps for meeting friends, and show you how Facebook Events can keep you from isolating in the real world. Don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter so you don’t miss any future editions!
Motherhood – As Lonely as Divorce or Bereavement?
There is a new report by the British Red Cross, revealed in this article on The Telegraph, that discusses the shock of new motherhood, and how it can be the loneliest, most difficult experience of your life. These feelings can really surface when you try to compare your reality to what you see online or in magazines.
I’ve had quite a few mom clients and they told me, during coaching sessions, that they feel immensely lonely due to their mom lifestyle.
So if you’re a mom, you should know that you’re not alone. In fact, you can go ahead and find a local group, community or events where you’d meet liked-minded people feeling these same things.
If you’re not a mom, what you should take from this is that whenever you go through major life events, your social life can go sideways. Avoid getting too negative about it (loneliness does that to your brain) and do your best to find time and using resources for making friends.
The Options are Endless… More Apps for Meeting Friends
This article on Bustle acknowledges that there are apps for everything under the sun nowadays. Yes, even meeting friends. As you get older, the friends you do have can get very busy doing things like getting married, moving, or having kids. These new apps help you break the cycle of staying inside alone… again.
I know what you’re thinking… yet another “apps for making friends” article. Although we’ve covered this before, there isn’t a be-all, end-all app for making friends yet (although Patook is getting closer to being it).
For example, Tinder mixes dating as an individual with “meeting new friends as a group.” It’s really just saying as a group, to be honest. Not everyone wants to declare to their whole Facebook list that they’re looking for dates. And if it’s really dating as a group, then you’ve already excluded existing couples or people who aren’t looking for dates to begin with.
Bumble BFF could work, but BFF is a term largely used by women and girls… so guys might feel this app is not for them.
Many other apps that mix dating with friendship don’t really work. Patook actually stops anyone from abusing the app or getting too flirty, makes people comfortable using the app, feeling that they really can meet new friends.
Facebook Rescues You from Online Isolation with Events
Facebook’s standalone app, Events, helps you browse nearby happenings, see the dates of your upcoming Facebook Events as well as imported calendars. Tech Crunch says that the app is designed to help everyone better discover and manage events. It is available for both iOS and Android.
This new standalone app might seem like “just another thing that Facebook is asking you to install.” It may not seem that useful to you right now, but it really does help. I’ve been testing it for a while now, and it’s really useful. On the main Facebook app and site, the information about what’s happening in your city is drowned in the sea of information, news, and everything else posted by friends.
But this standalone app for events can give you answers to questions you might be asking yourself like:
- “What can I do tomorrow with friends?”
- “What can I do tonight?”
- “Are there any local events that I can attend and meet new people?”
- “Are there any interesting groups/communities meeting around me?”
- “I want to invite people to hang out… what should I suggest to them?”
This app makes it so easy to figure out those things while on the move.
– Paul Sanders