Credits: Social Media
Realization that adult life reduces to ‘catch-up friendships’ saddens TikTok
A new concept is taking over social media called ‘catch-up friendships’, which sums up how your relationships with friends change in adulthood.
The phenomenon emerged on TikTok in January and has left many emotional as they realize that they no longer spend quality time with their closest friends.
Life is full of ‘catch-up friendships’
A catch-up friendship is one where you only meet up once in a while to “catch up” and spend the entire time listing everything that is going on in your life. This differs from friendships at school and college, when you see them all the time so can socialise more intimately.
The idea was started by a TikTok user called Bianca, who said in a viral video: “Be honest with yourself, have most of your friendships devolved into catch-up friendships? I’ve never heard anyone talk about this but it’s something that no one tells you about how your friendships change after college.”
She explained that when you’re at college, you spend a lot of time with your friends as everyone is living in “one convenient five-block radius”. You are able to see them really often, so are “intimately aware” of everything that is happening in their lives.
That means you don’t have to spend all the time you have together catching up and can simply coexist with one another. For example, by watching a movie or hanging out in silence. However, this all changes after you graduate.
Everyone moves away and you don’t get to see people as much, so maintaining those friendships is a lot less about coexisting and more about organising dinners, drinks or phone calls to specifically catch up and update each other.
As life gets in the way, you often go six months without talking to your closest friends, and they turn into catch-up friendships. Every time you see each other or speak on the phone, you then have to list loads of life updates and “have essentially spent 45 minutes interviewing each other”.
This “takes away the joys” of what made your friendship special in the first place, as you only get to hear the “big picture stuff” rather than the smaller things.
Realization saddens TikTok users
In the comments, TikTok users are all relating to this phenomenon, and it’s leaving many emotional at the loss of their most-valued friendships.
One person wrote: “This is gonna make me cry.”
“It’s almost like you no longer experience life together but instead just tell each other about it,” said another.
A third person added: “I’ve been thinking about this so much and didn’t know how to put it into words.”
“It’s sad because you’re not making new memories, just reminiscing about the past,” someone else said.
So, how do you stop this cycle? Well, in another video, Bianca said that social media is actually a good way to keep your friends up to date. For example, sharing life updates on your Instagram Stories tells those long-distance friends what’s going on and keeps the connection going.
She also recommended sending friends voice notes in between meet-ups, so they are already caught up on your life. Then, when you do get to spend time together in person, you can interact in a more personal way as you already know all the life updates.
