Not only have we been facing social anxiety for years, the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified it.
Only Friends is revolutionising the way millennials engage by helping our members find real people and create connections in the real world.
Created by the team that changed the landscape for online connection to combat loneliness — Only Friends is a membership community designed exclusively for Australian millennials that helps to solve the loneliness pandemic amongst young people.
Founded by entrepreneurial couple Shaun Mahoney and Tamara Sheeran Only Friends has been created to inspire and empower millennials to meaningfully connect with the people around them.
Making a positive difference is what drives us — doing good for people, the planet and the things that matter.
Humans are social creatures: in this simple and obvious fact lies both the problem and the solution to the current crisis of loneliness. Loneliness is defined as a subjective feeling of social isolation that is more related to the perceived quality rather than the quantity of relationships. Loneliness is well known to be associated with poorer health outcomes and has been identified as an emerging public health problem. While loneliness affects people of all ages, millennials and young adults are thought to be particularly vulnerable and a root cause and contributor to many of the epidemics sweeping the world today from alcohol and drug addiction to anxiety, depression, and suicide.
Loneliness, is affecting not only our health but also how we experience school, how we perform in the workplace, and the sense of division and polarization in our society. At the center of our loneliness is our innate desire to connect. We have evolved to participate in community, to forge lasting bonds with others, to help one another, and to share life experiences. We are, simply, better together.
While technology promises to connect us, it is actually providing interaction not connection. Interactions are quick and surface level with a complete absence of complexity required to build relationships. These increased interactions are hardening us to human sensitivities, making it easier to provide unkind comments, intimidation and judgment.
Despite all of the progress we have made in how we talk about mental health and bullying, we are still ashamed of feeling lonely.
The good news is that with awareness of the causes of our loneliness, comes creative solutions to help ourselves and those we love to create more connected lives. Data shows we are healthier and more fulfilled with just one real connection than thousands of online interactions. Only Friends (OF) is designed to facilitate connections online with a key focus on the offline. Only Friends also provides leadership and community purpose, personal awareness and development tools along with shared experiences to help soften the hardness of todays world and enable deeper connection and meaningful relationships for healthy humans!
The OF movement is empowering millennials to make deeper connections and tell loneliness to FO!