One of my favorite Disney songs of all time is from The Jungle Book and Buzzy, Flaps, Ziggy, and Dizzy’s (a parody of The Beatles, by the way) performance of “That’s What Friends Are For.”

I spent this past weekend with some of my favorite people in the whole world. Board games and fun times until the wee hours of the morning engulfed the wedding weekend of two of my very best friends. But, after college, it can be tough to find friends.

Making Friends

Whenever someone asks me what the hardest part the transition from college life to real life has been, one answer comes to mind: making friends.

If the root of Millennial distrusts is not found in the vast social and political ills plaguing the country today, where is it found?

It’s not as easy to make lifelong friends when you’re not crammed into a two mile by two mile plot of land with two thousand of Jesus-loving peers, like Susie and I were when we were students at Taylor University. They don’t teach you how to make friends beyond college while you’re in college, and for an introvert like me, it’s not always easy to branch out.

Some, like Kate Shellnutt in her recent article on Christianity Today, rightly attribute a smaller friend pool to the exclusivity of marriage. When a couple gets married, they’re likely to spend less time making new friends and more time cultivating their new relationship—everyone knows this.

But the difficulty to make friends can be attributed to more than marriage. Technology plays a significant role as well. Kate notices this, and cites the role of Netflix in particular:

Making friends in your late 20s and beyond is a whole different game. Not only are there fewer opportunities to meet people, there are also fewer people to meet, since married folks tend to pull themselves off the friendship market. Plenty of young couples dedicate more time to catching up on their Netflix queue than seeing their neighbors, coworkers, and old buddies. My husband and I have been guilty, and so have plenty of our friends. They update Facebook about spending yet another weekend in, joking about becoming “a boring old married couple.”

In addition to having some difficulty making friends, Millennials also, generally speaking, trust people less than former generations. The question is: Why?

Trusting People

Last week, D.C. McAllister wrote a great piece on Millennials and trust issues for The Federalist, citing a report from the Associated Press on a new study which examined the level of trust among various generations.

Here’s the staggering breakdown. The following percentages are “percentages of high school seniors who think ‘most people can be trusted'”:

1970s = ~33% of Baby Boomers

1990s = 18% of Gen Xers

2000s = 16% of Millennials

Those statistics are mind-blowing. Millennials do not trust people at all, relatively-speaking. Yet again, we’re faced with the operative question: Why?

Millennials excel at pursuing sexual “intimacy” and struggle with the pursuit of social intimacy.

Sure, the United States is experiencing some difficult times in a lot of ways. The recent Recession, the exhausting persistence of the War on Terror and violence in the Middle East, and a whole lot more. Violence, economic instability, and corruption are present to be sure, but, McAllister makes a good point:

Could it really be … that a bad economy, violence, scandals, and strife have caused this deep-seated skepticism among Millennials? It doesn’t seem so when you consider life wasn’t much different—and was probably a lot worse in some respects—in the 1970s, including a bad economy, a higher violent crime rate, conflicts over the Vietnam War, the impeachment of a president, an increase in drug use compared to previous generations, and a decline in the standard of living. The 1970s have been described as a decade of anger, disillusionment, bitterness, and cynicism. Yet, a third of those young people thought most people could be trusted.

If violence is the problem, then it seems Millennials today should be more trusting than those in the 1970s. Of course, one of the problems could be that Millennials perceive there is more violence because of the 24-hour news cycle and the exaggerating effect of the Internet, as people think bad things are happening all the time even though they don’t see it themselves. This is certainly part of the perception, but I think there’s more going on here than just violence—real or perceived.

If the root of Millennial distrusts is not found in the vast social and political ills plaguing the country today, where is it found?

Yet again, when examining the distrust of the Millennial generation, we must ask the question: Why? But, I think McAllister can finally give us the answer.

Proximity Precipitates Trustworthiness

McAllister asks:

How many Millennials know who Jennifer Lawrence is dating but don’t know who their brother or sister likes at school? How many people know that an African-American got shot by a white cop in Missouri, but don’t know their neighbor down the street just lost his son to cancer? How many know Barack Obama likes to play golf and basketball, but don’t even know the names of their local representatives—representatives they could go talk to if they wanted, something that will never happen with Obama?

She is hitting the nail square on its head. Young people vaguely know about stuff, but they often do not truly know those around them. Much of that comes from our connectedness on the Internet, and specifically social media. We’ll talk more about that on Friday.

McAllister continues:

Millennials know a lot about people they don’t know and never will. They know a lot about people who don’t know them—people who don’t care about them and never will. Outside of a few friends, they’re more occupied by people who are nothing like them and have nothing to do with them than with those who do. Is it any wonder they don’t trust anyone?

Millennials excel at pursuing sexual “intimacy” and struggle with the pursuit of social intimacy.

I want to end with one last bit from McAllister:

We play at being engaged in society, but we really aren’t. We are actors on the grand stage that is cosmopolitan America, each of us wearing masks. We imagine we live sophisticated, civic-minded, evolved lives, but we are disconnected at our deepest levels. We are isolated, alone, surrounded by billions of others, all sharing information that does nothing to enliven the soul or develop bonds of real affection.

What is the answer? Do we scurry back to the caves and live in tribes, caring only about those who are exactly like us?

I echo McAllister’s question: What is the answer? Later on in her article, she proposes a possible solution, and on Friday, we’ll look at her solution and how the local church is best equipped to accomplish it.

I’m probably nearing the limit of “fair use” of someone else’s article, but McAllister’s piece is just too good to not share. Be sure to read it for yourself, and come back on Friday for some more analysis.

Read the follow up post here: The Solution to Millennial Trust Issues Is…