The 3 stupidly simple ways Gen Z is hanging out
Gen Z is using their phones to put their phones down
People love to hate on Gen Z.
Chronically online. The loneliest generation alive. Their blank stares and noise cancelling headphones.
But I'm inspired by them.
Millennials like me are nostalgic for a time before the smartphones swallowed everything. When tech was exciting and the future felt hopeful.
Gen Z never had that.
They grew up in a broken, always online world with no memory of functioning government or a stable climate. But instead of collapsing into it, many are figuring out how to navigate it.
And they're using their phones to put their phones down.
I'm calling it inconvenience culture. My generation moved toward convenience, optimization, and performance. We let Zuckerberg build the town square and then wondered why it felt terrible. Gen Z is moving in the opposite direction. Toward friction. Toward imperfection. Toward presence.
Here's what they figured out and what you should steal right now.
Activity is just the excuse
For most of my life, social experiences just sorta happened. We called it hanging out, what author Sheila Liming describes as "daring to do not much in the company of other people."
Nobody does that anymore.
Older generations lost the habit. Gen Z never had it. Screens replaced proximity. COVID cancelled the rest. Social muscles atrophied.
So Gen Z did something practical. They stopped trying to hang out and started signing up for things instead.
Run clubs. Pottery classes. Mahjong dens. Crochet nights. Birdwatching groups.
Activities with a start time, a shared focus, and zero pressure to perform. Eventbrite found that 84% of Gen Zers who attend interest-based gatherings report developing close friendships through them.
A whole new category of apps has been built around this insight — let's call them IRL experience apps, because "social apps" is a dirty word now.
Timeleft matches strangers for dinner on Wednesday nights. You get a text with a restaurant address an hour before. No swiping. No profiles. No small talk before the small talk. Just a table and strangers. Now in 200+ cities, 150,000 people a month.
The activity is just the excuse. The friendship gets built around it.
Friction is a great icebreaker
My generation perfected low friction.
Watch anything, anytime. Food delivered in twenty minutes. Next day shipping. Swipe right.
But dopamine rewards the struggle, not the goal. Remove all friction and things start feeling empty. You can't OnlyFans your way into a social life.
Gen Z gets this.
They grew up with maximum convenience and found it hollow. So they're deliberately choosing harder options.
Film cameras where you can't see the photo until it's developed. Vinyl records you have to physically flip. Dumbphones with no social media. Phone-free clubs where you surrender your device at the door. Regularmaxxing: going to the same café so many times the staff learn your name.
And something that genuinely surprises me every time I see it: according to Resy, 90% of Gen Z prefer sitting at the communal table when dining out. Only 60% of boomers do. Gen Z wants to be next to strangers.
Friction does something algorithms can't. It creates shared experience. Finishing a run together, waiting for a photo to develop, sitting next to someone you've never met, these are the moments connection actually happens.
The inconvenience is the point.
Show up to something, not someone
My generation made it easy to disappear.
Instant global communication also gave us instant ghosting. And people are sick of it. The number one complaint I hear from people, young and old:
"I'm the only one putting in the effort."
It's not you. It's a structural problem. When everything happens through a screen, it's just easier to not reply than to have a hard conversation.
Gen Z has found a workaround. Instead of showing up for a specific person, with all the pressure and potential for disappointment that brings, they show up for a specific thing. And whoever else shows up, shows up.
Body doubling is a perfect example. You find a stranger online or in person, share what you're both working on, and spend 50 minutes getting it done together. It's an old trick from the ADHD community. It boosts accountability, models focus, and makes it easier to stay on task.
No relationship required. No social performance. Just parallel presence. Focusmate has logged over 100 million minutes of this.
This is the fourth space Gen Z is building, using their phone to make real connection, then putting the phone away. The phone isn't the destination, just a bridge.
So here's what I'd steal from Gen Z: find one thing in your community you might want to try.
A birding group. A run club. A knitting class. Something you'd be bad at with people you don't know yet.
I've wanted to take a cooking class for years because the only things I can cook well are eggs and popcorn. Writing this finally convinced me to book one. The worst that happens is I burn something and meet someone.
What about you?