Left is Shara Singh 30, who met three new friends at a platonic speed dating event in Toronto called “Just Checking In.” The four women celebrated their one-year friend anniversary in May, and got their driver’s licences together in winter.Supplied
Over lunch and thrift shopping in Toronto, Shara Singh marked her one-year anniversary in May, not with a partner but with three new friends.
The four came upon each other in an unexpected way, at a speed-dating event not technically meant for dating but for women seeking new friends in adulthood.
The platonic gatherings, “Just Checking In,” launched a little more than a year ago at The Villij, a wellness studio for women of colour. Held monthly, the events steer talk away from career networking – Toronto’s default conversation – toward matters of substance.
Single people are fed up with dating apps and returning to the real world to meet their match
Ms. Singh’s group of women, all in their late 20s to early 30s, quickly clicked. They talked about wresting back time for themselves in the face of constant demands. The four are daughters of immigrant parents, and aging and caregiving weighed on their minds. They also realized no one in the group had a driver’s licence. Together, they got their G1s last winter.
Emerging from the fog of the pandemic, Ms. Singh, 30, was set on forging stronger female ties: “Everybody has their girl gang. I felt like I was missing that in life.”
The Villij, a Toronto wellness studio for women of colour, has been hosting the “Just Checking In" platonic speed dating events for a year.Nautica Simone/Supplied
Just Checking In is one in a growing trove of services previously reserved for dating but now focused on a new hunt: finding like-minded BFFs in your adult years. Platonic speed-dating events, coffee-date marathons and companionship services are proliferating, as are friendship apps and online communities.
For women looking to connect while navigating fertility, pregnancy, motherhood or menopause, there is Peanut. For sporty types, ATLETO offers athletics-focused meet-ups for students on campus. For travellers, there is Skout; for knitters, beekeepers, sushi makers and others with highly specific interests, there is Meetup. And for those in the market for a clique, LMK helps track down compatible packs.
Dating platforms are jumping on the friend train, too. Bumble is refocusing on its platonic arm, Bumble for Friends, and recently acquired Geneva, a friendship app meant to foster face-to-face interaction, while Hinge launched One More Hour, an initiative working to stave off loneliness in Gen Z.
The focus on friendship – on reconnection – follows a pandemic that put isolation on our collective radar. Some 47 per cent of Canadians report feeling lonely always, often or some of the time, with 40 per cent feeling they have a weak sense of belonging to local community, according to 2024 Statistics Canada data. Britain and Japan have appointed ministers of loneliness. U.S. Surgeon-General Vivek H. Murthy declared an epidemic of isolation, writing, “Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling – it harms both individual and societal health.”
“We’ve come out of this period of social isolation only to recognize that many people lack meaningful relationships in their lives, outside their primary partnerships,” said Laura Whitney Sniderman, founder and chief executive officer of the friendship platform Kinnd – a nod to “kindred” and “kindness.”
Laura Whitney Sniderman, Toronto founder and chief executive officer of Kinnd, a platform working to curb loneliness and help adults find platonic friends.Supplied
“Many people are experiencing loneliness for the first time,” Ms. Sniderman said. “The fact that dating apps are flipping their lens towards friendship reinforces that this is not something anybody should feel self-conscious about.”
Ms. Sniderman’s online community now counts more than 13,000 members, with a 60-per-cent to 40-per-cent female-to-male ratio. One goal, she said, is to propel people out into the real world, away from swiping and ghosting: “I hope that technology – especially for younger generations – should drive us toward remembering the value of in-person interaction.”
Kinnd asks members what knowledge, skills or time they have to offer to potential friends, plus what they’re looking to receive. One young man offered to swap strength training for jazz piano lessons. Another young woman advertised “a shoulder to cry on,” as well as intel on local shops and restaurants, in exchange for recipes and book recommendations, and “hopefully some new friends.”
Doesn’t it ring a bit transactional? Ms. Sniderman, who studied clinical and counselling psychology at Columbia University, counters that the exchanges are meant to encourage generosity and reciprocity, key ingredients in platonic chemistry.
The Kinnd online community has more than 13,000 members, with a 60 to 40 per cent female-to-male ratio.Laura Sniderman/Supplied
Still, an assumption persists that friendships should be established by adulthood – not hunted down through apps and speed dates at this stage in life. It’s a misconception that overlooks how these relationships change over a lifespan: the intense friendships of youth that fade as people outgrow each other, the ways people retreat into their careers, then into marriages and children, our circles shrinking further in older age.
“There’s this sense that if we find ourselves in a situation where we want more friends, then there’s something wrong with us. In fact, we all go through ebbs and flows in our social health,” said Kasley Killam, a Harvard-trained social scientist and author of The Art and Science of Connection, published in June.
After relocating from Vancouver to San Francisco in 2016, Ms. Killam joined Hey! VINA, a friendship app for women (”vina” is Icelandic for female friend). She hit it off with two women, with whom she remains close, inviting them to her wedding. Some wedding guests were curious, she said, when they discovered the women all met through an app. “It’s unusual,” Ms. Killam said. “But my experience is, it’s great that people are open to creative, modern ways of making friends.”
While many of the apps and services are co-ed, there seems to be greater appeal to women, who tend to be more pro-active than men in maintaining relationships, research has found. Scanning the market, Hey! VINA founder and CEO Olivia June remains unconvinced that droves of men would be game to meet new friends this way “without feeling social stigma.” While women aren’t shy about their platonic needs, men are often socialized to meet their buddies via side-by-side activities – sports, gaming, sitting at the bar.
“Some people might need an alibi in order to opt in,” Ms. June observed. “Maybe they’re not ready to say, ‘I’m looking for friends.’”
Kathryn Stark understands friend-making events can be intimidating. She organizes friendship speed-dating events at a public library in Aurora, a town outside Toronto. The library held its third event in May; attendees, most of them in their 20s and 30s, got coffee, cookies and icebreaker questions.
“Making the commitment and actually showing up in person to put yourself out there is a lot like dating, even if it is just for friendship,” said Ms. Stark, who is acting adult librarian.
People get five minutes to chat each other up, then everyone privately fills out a score card, jotting down who had friend potential. Library staff collect the cards, making matches afterward.
Even if the speed dates don’t yield lifelong friends, “it does serve a purpose to people,” Ms. Stark said. “Even if just for the night, they get out of their shells and converse with others with different life experiences.”
While many of the new friend services cater to lonely millennials and Gen Z, some are speaking to older generations, including Amintro, reserved for people 50 and older. Founder Charlene Nadalin created it with her mother in mind. Marge Nadalin, 80, was widowed at 56. She wasn’t interested in dating, nor did she have a wide friend circle. People at her age moved away in retirement or disappeared into caregiving for ailing spouses.
As COVID numbers surged in December, 2021, Charlene Nadalin arranged a virtual holiday social for Amintro members. After a host led an online wine tasting and workshop on charcuterie boards, the friend-seekers were hived off into smaller groups. Peering in on the screen was Charlene’s mother. So was Nicole Blais from Sudbury, where the elder Ms. Nadalin had lived before moving to warmer climes in Florida. The two women exchanged phone numbers.
“We’ve become wonderful friends,” Ms. Nadalin said.
Ms. Blais keeps her friend up-to-date on Sudbury: which restaurant closed, who died. One day, she went by her friend’s old house and took photographs. “It’s memories,” Ms. Nadalin said.
For two years, Ms. Blais has visited her friend in Port St. Lucie, Fla. They stroll, shop, have ice cream. Ms. Nadalin will invite her neighbours over for happy hour, or organize big family dinners.
The octogenarian compares the Amintro app to an attentive host making introductions between guests at a party.
“We’re all here because we have room in our lives for more people,” her daughter said. “I want to call my mom at home and not be able to get her because she’s galivanting around town.”
Zosia Bielski