Feeling lonely doesn't mean something's wrong with you. It means you're human, and a lot of humans feel exactly the same right now. In 2025 the World Health Organization put a number on it: about one in six people worldwide feel lonely. And it isn't the old and frail who feel it most. When Meta and Gallup surveyed 142 countries in 2022 and 2023, young adults aged 19 to 29 reported more loneliness than people over 65.
For LGBTQ+ people, it runs higher. In a 2022 CDC survey across 26 US states, about half of LGBTQ+ adults said they felt socially isolated at least some of the time, against three in ten straight adults. And it doesn't go away with age. In AARP's 2024 survey of more than 2,200 LGBTQ+ Americans over 45, half said they already feel socially isolated at times, rising to 63% of trans and non-binary people.
It tends to bite at three moments
When you're new in a big city. You move somewhere bigger to breathe. More people, more freedom, and somehow it's harder to make one real friend. It's a common enough story to have a name. And it matters more than it sounds. The Trevor Project found in 2024 that LGBTQ+ young people in accepting communities attempt suicide at less than half the rate of those in unwelcoming ones. Belonging isn't a nice extra. It keeps people alive.
When you're getting older. Later on, the circle can quietly shrink. Many of us are more likely to live alone, less likely to have kids or a partner close by. The friendships you build now are the ones that carry you.
When you're a long way from anywhere. If you're somewhere rural or conservative, the nearest scene might be one bar an hour's drive away, or nothing at all. In a 2021 Trevor Project study, only 4% of rural LGBTQ+ young people said their community felt very accepting. Distance shouldn't get to decide whether you have people.
What most of us try, and why it leaves us flat
So we improvise. We open Grindr, because it's there, even when it isn't really what we're after. Back in 2016, a typical user spent around two hours a day on it (The Advocate, 2016), and in 2018 a large study of phone habits ranked it the app most likely to leave people feeling worse afterwards (Center for Humane Technology, 2018). We join Facebook groups and Reddit threads, good for a question at midnight but rarely someone you actually meet. We hunt for a local meetup, if there is one, if it's on this month, if it's near enough.
Any of these can work. None of them was built to help you make a friend who lives twenty minutes away.
A kinder way to find your people
That's the gap we built Among Our People to close. Find a Local Friend is the corner of the site made for this one thing: meeting people near you who could turn into real friends, at any age, wherever you live.
It's built to be the opposite of a dating app. The focus isn't your photos. It's where you are, what friendship actually means to you, and the things you'd genuinely want to do with someone. Your profile says who you are in plain terms: your gender, your orientation, your age and your pronouns. Nobody's performing, and there's nothing to guess at.
It's a quiet gift when you travel, too. You can search any place you like, not only where you're standing. Moving cities next month, taking a long work trip, buying a second home somewhere warm? Start finding local people before you land, so you arrive with a friendly face or two instead of a hotel room and a map. Or begin the day you get there. The location is always yours to choose.
And it costs nothing to look
Browsing is free, and so is building your profile and being found. You don't pay a penny until you've found someone you actually want to write to. Only then do we ask for a small yearly membership, a few euros a year, to open your messages. Never found your person? Then you never pay. It felt like the only fair way to do it.
Because this is what we believe. You're so much more than a couple of racy photos on a sex app. You're worth knowing properly. Give yourself, and the people near you, the chance to meet someone carefully. Someone who might just become a friend for the rest of your life.
Last reviewed: 17 October 2026