Friendship: How the Meaning Changed for Women in the Digital Age
In a world of curated feeds and busy lives, the most radical thing a woman can offer another woman is still the same thing it’s always been. Friendship. Dr Marina Nani looks into how the meaning changed for women in the digital age, as a reminder that none of us were ever meant to do life alone.
And Why It Might Be Time to Log Off to Find What You’re Really Missing
There’s a strange kind of loneliness that exists in the modern world , the kind that creeps in even when your phone keeps lighting up with notifications. We live surrounded by digital noise. We scroll through pictures of people’s lives, watch their posts unfold in real-time and convince ourselves we’re connected. But for many women, that connection feels paper-thin.
Friendship has changed. Not entirely because we changed but because the world we move through every day has been rewired. Social media promised to bring us closer. And in small, fleeting ways, sometimes it does. But more often, it leaves us sitting in silence, staring at a screen, feeling like an outsider in other people’s highlight reels.
And slowly, without realising, we started swapping real friendship for something far less nourishing. It’s not that social media is all bad. But the way it has seeped into the space where real friendship used to live — that’s worth noticing. It’s worth questioning. The truth is, friendship was never meant to be consumed. It was meant to be experienced. Felt. Lived. No filter, no audience, no performance.
Women are starting to remember that. There is a quiet movement happening, a longing to slow down, to go back to something real, softer, more human. It starts with detoxing from the noise. Logging off isn’t about disappearing. It’s about returning. Returning to the spaces where friendship feels real. Returning to the phone calls where voices overlap in laughter. Returning to the coffee dates without a photo-op. Returning to being fully where you are — with whoever is right there in front of you.
Stepping away from social media, even for a while, can feel uncomfortable at first. We’re used to filling every quiet moment with scrolling. But silence creates space — and in that space, something beautiful happens. We start to notice who we miss. Who we think about without an algorithm reminding us. Who crosses our mind when the noise fades.
Real friendship shows up differently when you’re not broadcasting your life to the world. It becomes more intimate, more sacred. Less about likes and more about love. Less about updates and more about understanding. This isn’t about deleting every app forever. It’s about reclaiming the parts of your life — and your friendships — that shouldn’t have to perform for attention. It’s about choosing to text a friend privately instead of leaving a comment publicly. It’s about calling someone to say you’re proud of them, not just reacting with an emoji. It’s about building relationships that don’t exist to entertain anyone else.
Women are tired. Tired of comparison. Tired of the constant low-level hum of everyone else’s lives playing in the background of their own. Friendship was never supposed to feel like another thing you have to “keep up with.” It was supposed to feel like home. And maybe that’s the invitation of this moment — to detox from what drains us, and return to what feeds us.
Real friendship is not attached to a screen. It’s in kitchens. In long walks. In messy moments and silent conversations. In turning up when it’s inconvenient. In random kindness over perfection. It’s quiet. It’s slow. It’s sometimes a little harder to arrange. But it’s worth everything. When the phone is finally face down, when the scrolling stops, when the online noise goes quiet, that is when the real connection happens. That’s where friendship lives. Not in a digital post. But in your story together.
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