As many as 50% of Australians have experienced more loneliness since the pandemic, with TimeOut recently ranking Sydney as the third worst city in the world for making friends.
St Vincent’s Clinic’s Open Support Isolation service in the inner-city, eastern suburb of Sydney, Darlinghurst, has found that younger people in their mid-20s are affected by loneliness the most.
Listen the full episode below to find out why:
The result shows that people scared to embrace new people are now more likely to misread social cues.
In today’s episode of THIS ARVO IN SYDNEY, host Sacha Barbour Gatt spoke to LiSTNR news journalist Loren Howarth to find out what we can do to increase social connections and available services to support us.
Nathan Nute, the program manager for St Vincent’s Clinic’s Open Support Isolation service, said:
While covid was great for that kind of work-life balance, what we’re starting to see now is some of those people reaching out to us really having trouble meeting new friends.”
Recent research states that Australians have had greater feelings of loneliness since the beginning of the pandemic.
Some of the people have struggled just to ask the right type of questions or trying to exchange information with each other as well, just fear of rejection,”
Nute said.
He added that everyone would experience some form of loneliness or social isolation in their lifetime.
It is trying to break that stigma and say it’s OK to feel like that. But you know, there’s people and organisations, like ourselves, that can help tackle that problem.”
The good news is that Sydneysiders have many opportunities to socialise and embrace new people in their lives.
Conscious Connection events ran a picnic to meet friends in Sydney last weekend and it sold out.
The Little Big Foundation also started a ‘speed friending’ event in Summer Hill for people to open their minds.
Hosted by Sacha Barbour, This Arvo in Sydney is a 10 to 12 minute daily news podcast made just for Sydney! Listen now on the Listnr app.