Social mixers for friendships gain traction among young adults in S’pore

SINGAPORE – Freelance fitness instructor Jarell Low, 33, came to a startling realisation about his social circle during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I was consistently hanging out with the same four friends I made in my secondary school and polytechnic days every single week. And then three of them got married and started to have kids around the same time, so you lose a bit of them in terms of time,” he said.

As Mr Low looked to pad his dwindling social calendar, he found out he was not the only one.

His friend, Ms Dong Weiyue, 30, who used to work in a Big Four accounting firm, had grown accustomed to meeting new people through spontaneous dinners and house parties when she was living in the United States.

Back in Singapore, she missed those opportunities to make new friends.

“In Singapore, we grow up in the same social circles. For example, we are still friends with people we met in school or through our co-curricular activities… We don’t feel the need to go out and meet new people,” said Ms Dong.

In December 2022, driven by a desire for new and meaningful friendships, Mr Low and Ms Dong launched Offline, a social networking group for people between the ages of 25 and 35.

Every three weeks, the group holds an event bringing together some 50 people from all walks of life – from lawyers to jiu-jitsu instructors. The sessions are advertised on Instagram, and participants pay $75, which goes to venue rental and refreshments for the evening.

The nights start with icebreaker games, and guests invariably get to mingle over snacks. The catch? Work talk is forbidden in the first 90 minutes of the session, pushing people to strike up more authentic conversations over shared interests and perspectives.

Thirteen sessions have been held, said the co-founders.

With the pandemic

driving home the need for in-person connection,

similar groups hoping to spark friendships and nurture communities have popped up in recent years, and are gaining traction from young adults whose friend groups have been impacted by life’s big changes in career, children and marriage.

While some of the groups hold free events, others charge a fee. Some vet participants, while others open events to all.

Offline, for instance, screens interested participants through a 10-minute Zoom call to weed out rude and abusive people, and those who want to promote their products or business.

Regardless, they all have the same aim: to get a room full of strangers together in hopes that platonic sparks will fly.

Ms Cassandra Wang, 32, an IT programme manager who attended one of Offline’s events, said the experience of being able to roam between different groups and conversations in a room full of strangers was intimidating, but oddly liberating.

Ms Wang liked how topics at the icebreaker games were designed to be politically incorrect at times, and encouraged people to not judge a book by its cover.

“The most interesting interaction I had was when we were talking about tattoos, and this well-groomed, gentlemanly guy told us he had a tattoo of a kitty on his chest,” she said.

She added: “It really challenged my perspective of what our judgment versus reality is.”

Without the typical expectations of social mixers for dating or professional networking, Ms Wang also found herself able to relax.

“A lot of adult friendships are formed either through glorious, if disastrous, drinking events, or tinged with dating expectations, so it was fun to go to an event with not many expectations and for just pure, basic friendships,” she said.

She said while it felt weird to be interviewed for a social setting, in hindsight, she was glad as it helped ensure the evening would be free of harassment.

Ms Joell Tee, 26, who is the host of Dinner With Strangers, a passion project she started in January 2022 to get people to meet over meals, agrees.

She first experimented with a speed-dating format, but quickly realised it could lead to a lot of hurt if the romance did not pan out.

“I don’t want to create events and bring people together only to end in disappointment,” said Ms Tee.

The self-professed social butterfly said she is usually the one introducing friends to each other, and the project played to her natural strengths.

She promoted Dinner With Strangers on social media channels like Telegram and Instagram.

All five dinners she held between 2022 and 2023 were oversubscribed, with about 50 people registering each time for up to a dozen spots.

To form each guest list, she compiled quirky questions meant to elicit responses that would reveal respondents’ personality and aspirations, like what song they would share with their 15-year-old selves, and what animal their best friends would describe them as.

Based on the responses, Ms Tee then selected people she thought would click. Attendees had to pay a $10 admin fee to confirm their slot.

“I’ve been blessed to have a good gut feeling and a good sense of people’s personalities. So far, I think the group dynamics have been quite good,” Ms Tee said.

Mr Rauf Amirul Zulkiflee Soh, 27, a creative director who attended a Dinner With Strangers event, said the other people were open.

“I sensed that everyone came with the same intention: to engage in conversation, get to know one another, and see where the evening would lead us. This shared mindset made it more approachable, and easier to talk to each other,” he said.

National University of Singapore associate professor of sociology Tan Ern Ser said such groups attract people with a high propensity and readiness to meet others.

The groups also help young adults handle a world that is very different from that of their parents, Prof Tan said.

“The ‘work hard, work smart, get credentials, settle down, and secure a more or less permanent pathway to success’ formula of their parents’ generation is less relevant these days.

“They therefore need to find new ways of navigating the changed social and economic landscapes through building close relationships with their peers and mentors,” said Prof Tan.

Former user experience designer Ang Jin Shaun, 44, set up Stranger Conversations when he began a career sabbatical around November 2021.

Back then, he was contemplating what fulfilment would mean for him, and was interested in meeting people who had charted unconventional life paths.

During the pandemic, he hosted sessions on audio chat app Clubhouse and video conferencing app Zoom, where he got various guests to share their life experiences.

Among them were a vegan cafe owner who had started the venture after living in a van and driving around South-east Asia, a private dining chef who had moved to Portugal to do it without any professional cooking experience, and an ex-banker who now runs storytelling slams.

But during one of his first physical events, organised at local bookstore Books Beyond Borders in May 2022, Mr Ang realised there was an appetite for more.

“People were hanging out and mingling for up to an hour after the session was done. There’s something here, and people were interested in each other, and not just the main guest. That’s how it sort of evolved into a community,” said Mr Ang.

He started hosting events where people could bring a word or a piece of writing and share what it meant to them, leading to deeper conversations among attendees, who average around 15 a session.

Most attendees are between the ages of 25 and 40.

Encouraged, Mr Ang decided to run a 30-day event called Stranger’s Gathering in September, where participants would be able to suggest and help organise events for every day of the month.

Participant Shreya Sharma, 32, a product analyst at Google, found it healing to be among a group of people who were all asking the big questions of life.

“Each event had a different vibe – one was at a park, and we spoke to hippies who spent the 80s travelling all over the world, and in another one we spoke to a singer-songwriter who shared her story and original music with us,” she said.

“The community is full of people who are figuring life out, and I feel like we’re all supporting each other and cheering each other on. I would always come back energised from the events,” she added.

Another ground-up initiative to make friends was started by Ms Grace Ann Chua, 29, and her university mates when they realised how hard it was to connect with people once they had stopped living on campus.

Friendzone aims to create meaningful opportunities for friendships where people live.

Since 2018, it has hosted free gatherings in neighbourhoods like Marine Parade, Tampines, and Bishan for those between the ages of 18 and 40. It now also holds paid events where young adults can meet to discuss topics like friendships, success and family.

Over 250 Friendzone events have been held, connecting over 5,000 people. They have sparked long-lasting friendships, said Ms Chua.

“We’ve had a couple of participants who started new hobbies and interests with people they met at our events, and have found new passions in life because of it.

“I know two people who picked up rock climbing through another neighbour, and have since gained six-pack abs and become very strong climbers. Another duo became close enough to go on a cruise together,” she added.

Organisers say that while they can provide the platform for new friendships, it is up to people themselves to nurture them.

“A lot of the friendships that we maintain, there’s a lot of intention and effort behind them… If you feel you can connect with someone, you’ve got to put in the effort,” said Dinner With Strangers’ Ms Tee.

Dr Brandon Koh, an industrial-organisational psychologist and lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, said that while social networking groups can help expand networks, it is the quality of friendships that prevents loneliness and nurtures well-being.

“A lot of research shows that self-disclosure is an essential ingredient for quality friendship. It takes the relationship beyond the more superficial social networking. Of course, self-disclosure also depends on trust and genuine interest in each other, which is built through quality interactions,” said Dr Koh, adding that people need to cultivate active empathic listening skills.

“Especially when facing loneliness, it is natural to desire friendships to fill the void. However, genuine friendships begin by giving rather than taking,” he said.