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Scroll through TiKTok and you might run into the “happiest at home” or “cozy night” hashtags.
Both feature people alone on their couch or in bed, voiceovers saying “I feel great about what I did last night, which was nothing” or “where are you going after work? I’m going to lay-down town, horizontal heaven, bedtime boulevard.”
There’s nothing wrong with staying in alone. Sometimes you just need a quiet night to rest. But recently, researchers have found that even those who’d like to be out with people are finding it hard to make plans and leave the house — which could affect their overall wellbeing and success.
Here’s why they’re feeling stuck, and what experts recommend doing if their struggle rings a bell.
‘You need to make time for people’
Among those who wish they spent more time with friends, nearly 31% say they’re too busy or tired to reach out, according to a recent survey by the American Friendship Project, or AFP, which has been studying the state of friendship in America since 2022. Nineteen percent also say their job gets in the way.
Department chair and professor of communication at the University of Kansas and co-founder of AFP Jeffrey Hall understands these constraints.
“If there are people working two gig jobs who have no predictable schedule,” he says, “and by some statistics, there’s an enormous portion of Americans who can’t get 40-hour-a-week work and are picking up gig work,” being too busy or tired to socialize makes sense.
But if you’ve already identified that you wish you spent more time with friends, “you need to find ways around” these barriers, he says. “You need to make time for people.”
Try planning ahead and put spending time with friends on your to-do list, he says. Ideally, you’d see them face to face, but even a phone call can help.
‘Often what you’re feeling is what other people are feeling’
Another barrier AFP identified is finances: 38% of people say they don’t have enough money to spend time with friends.
It’s a finding echoed by a recent Harris Poll survey of 603 Gen Zers. While 60% say they prefer hanging out with their friends in person and 71% feel they’re missing the in-person experiences older generations had at their age, 68% also say going out isn’t worth what it does to their wallet.
Again, these constraints are not surprising. Overall consumer prices went up 25% between January 2020 and November 2025, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Life is expensive.
But for those who find themselves craving social connection even as they worry about spending, there are ways to tackle both.
“Try something new that is in alignment with your interests and your goals but also has a community aspect that doesn’t cost a lot,” says Erika Rasure, chief financial wellness advisor at Beyond Finance. That could mean doing a free yoga class, for example, seeing what events your local library has to offer or even joining a Dungeons & Dragons group.
Invite your friends to join you in these activities or find other ones they might like doing. The average price of half a gallon of ice cream in the U.S. is just under $6, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, for example. Buy a pint and invite them over to share it.
Rasure also recommends being open about your financial predicament. These kinds of talks “can take a lot of pressure off because often what you’re feeling is what other people are feeling and thinking as well,” she says.
Eventually ‘it actually becomes energizing’
It can be hard to change established norms.
“We get into habits that reinforce our habits,” says Hall. Those include not going out or visiting with our friends. They’re a “good example of habits that once we establish them, they have their own inertia.”
But as soon as you break those patterns and start building new ones, those new behaviors become easier, too. Eventually, routinely seeing your friends “no longer becomes tiring,” he says. “It actually becomes energizing.”
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