When was the last time you just hung out with a friend? (And I don't mean a dinner booked two months in advance) | Brigid Delaney

A day spent biking, resting in parks, watching court proceedings, eating lunch, playing pingpong, and finishing with chess by a fire felt decadent and wasteful because no work was done. Despite that, the day felt deeply satisfying through aimless movement and full presence with a friend. As adulthood arrives, time with friends changes as people take serious jobs, juggle multiple jobs, pursue mortgages or deposits, fall in love, marry, and start families. Catchups become harder due to exhaustion and convenience, and connection shifts toward tracking life events through Instagram stories. Social media provides frequent “snacks” of connection, but these are less nourishing than long, unstructured hangouts.

"A few years ago I had one unexpected, glorious day with a friend whose new corporate job had swallowed him whole. I was between jobs and he had allergies which gummed up his eyes with goo. It was his company's headshot day and he looked too hideous to photograph, so he called in sick. It was a beautiful Melbourne day. We rode our bikes around Fitzroy and into the city, lay in a park, popped into the supreme court to watch an hour of a random case, then had a long lunch, a game of pingpong in another park, then on to a pub where we played chess by a fire."

"It felt decadent, wasteful even, to spend a day like that rolling around town. No work was done and nothing was achieved. But on a deeper level it felt deeply satisfying to just spend a whole day hanging out, moving aimlessly around the city. We vowed to have more days like that but we never did. Last week a piece mourning the death of hanging out with friends hit a chord and went viral."

"Everyone entering their 30s goes through it—the dawning realisation that time with your friends changes. You betray each other in all the ways that friends do, getting serious jobs, working multiple jobs to pay a mortgage or save for a deposit, falling in love, getting married and having a family, or increasingly just ditching catchups because you're exhausted and it's easier to spend time keeping in touch on social media. Long, unstructured hangouts with friends stop or reduce to a trickle, replaced by the sort of ambient connection where you track each other's movements and big life events via Instagram stories."

"Marisa Franco, a psychologist who has written a book about friendship, told NPR: "I think the trickiness of social media is it gives us these snacks of connection. And it's like we've been subsisting on snacks of connection from social media rather than having the sort of nutrien""

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