We live in a world where we can communicate with almost anyone, almost anytime. We text, send videos, comment on posts, join group chats and follow hundreds or even thousands of people online.
Yet many children, teenagers and adults feel increasingly uncomfortable with something humans have been doing forever: talking to each other face-to-face.
For some people, starting a conversation feels intimidating. Others struggle to make friends, join a group, maintain relationships, read social cues or know what to say when there is an awkward silence. Some replay conversations afterward, wondering, Did I say something stupid? Did they think I was weird? Why didn’t they text me back?
These experiences can be described as challenges with social connection, and they are far more common than people realize.
Difficulty connecting with others doesn’t necessarily mean that someone lacks social skills or doesn’t like people. Challenges with social connection can develop for many reasons, including anxiety, temperament, limited opportunities to practice social interaction, negative past experiences, neurodevelopmental differences and the enormous changes technology has made to the way we communicate.
Understanding what is happening can help us stop judging these challenges and start treating social confidence as something that can be learned and strengthened.
What Are Challenges With Social Connection?
Challenges with social connection can look very different from one person to another.
Someone may have difficulty:
- Starting or maintaining conversations
- Making new friends
- Joining an established group
- Knowing what to talk about
- Making eye contact
- Reading facial expressions, tone of voice or body language
- Knowing when to speak or when to listen
- Handling pauses or awkward moments
- Speaking in groups
- Asking someone to get together
- Setting boundaries
- Handling disagreement or rejection
- Feeling comfortable at parties or social events
- Maintaining friendships over time
- Moving relationships from online communication to in-person connection
Interestingly, someone can appear socially capable and still experience significant anxiety internally.
A teenager may talk easily with close friends but freeze around unfamiliar peers. A college student may participate online but avoid meeting classmates after class. An adult may be successful professionally but dread networking events, dating or entering a room where they don’t know anyone.
Social connection isn’t an all-or-nothing ability.
Why Do Some People Have Difficulty Connecting With Others?
There usually isn’t one explanation.
Anxiety
Anxiety is one of the most common reasons social situations become difficult.
When people feel anxious, they often become intensely aware of themselves:
What should I say?
Where should I look?
Am I talking too much?
Do they like me?
What if I embarrass myself?
The problem is that this internal monitoring makes spontaneous conversation harder. Instead of listening and responding naturally, part of the brain is constantly evaluating the interaction.
This can create a cycle:
Anxiety → Avoidance → Less social practice → Less confidence → More anxiety
Avoidance provides short-term relief, but it can unintentionally reinforce the belief that social situations are dangerous or unmanageable.
Fear of Rejection
Humans are wired for connection. Being accepted by others matters to us.
For someone who has experienced bullying, exclusion, criticism, friendship losses or painful rejection, social situations may begin to feel risky.
Rather than risk being hurt again, the person may withdraw.
Unfortunately, withdrawal can sometimes be interpreted by others as disinterest, creating exactly the isolation the person was trying to prevent.
Temperament and Personality
Some people simply need more time to become comfortable socially.
Introversion, shyness and social anxiety are not the same thing.
An introverted person may genuinely enjoy relationships but prefer smaller groups and need time alone afterward. A shy person may initially feel hesitant but become comfortable once they know someone. Someone experiencing social anxiety may actively want connection while feeling significant fear about social judgment.
None of these characteristics means that someone is incapable of developing meaningful relationships.
Neurodevelopmental Differences
People with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, learning differences and other neurodevelopmental conditions may experience social situations differently.
They may have difficulty interpreting subtle social cues, staying focused during conversations, managing impulsivity, recognizing when someone wants to change topics or navigating the unwritten rules of friendships.
Understanding these differences is important because the goal shouldn’t be to force everyone to socialize in exactly the same way. The goal is to help people develop relationships while respecting who they are.
Why Does Social Connection Seem Harder for This Generation?
Today’s young people have grown up in a social environment unlike anything previous generations experienced.
Technology didn’t create social anxiety, loneliness or friendship problems. Those have always existed.
But technology has dramatically changed how often young people practice certain kinds of social interaction.
According to Pew Research Center, 46% of U.S. teenagers reported being online almost constantly in 2024, compared with 24% approximately a decade earlier.
CDC data also found that 77% of U.S. high school students reported using social media several times a day or more. Frequent social media use was associated with higher rates of bullying victimization, persistent sadness or hopelessness and some measures of suicide risk. Importantly, an association does not mean social media alone caused these outcomes.
The concern isn’t simply that teenagers have phones.
It’s what phones can sometimes replace.
We Have Fewer “Micro-Interactions”
Think about the tiny social experiences previous generations encountered throughout an ordinary day.
You:
- called someone’s house and had to speak to their parent before talking to your friend.
- ordered food by talking to someone.
- asked a salesperson where something was.
- called to make an appointment.
- showed up somewhere without knowing exactly who would be there.
- sat in waiting rooms without a phone.
- had to tolerate silence.
- approached someone you liked without knowing whether they liked you back.
None of these experiences seems particularly important by itself.
Collectively, however, they provided thousands of opportunities to practice social risk-taking, conversation, frustration tolerance and emotional regulation.
Today many of these interactions can be avoided.
We can order food through an app, make appointments online, text instead of calling and look at our phones whenever we’re uncomfortable.
Convenience has many benefits. But sometimes convenience also removes practice.
The Social Media Paradox
Social media isn’t inherently good or bad.
The American Psychological Association notes that online communication can provide genuine social connection, particularly for young people who feel isolated or anxious. It can allow adolescents to find supportive communities and even practice communication in environments that initially feel safer.
But online communication is different from face-to-face interaction.
In person, we constantly interpret:
facial expressions, pauses, tone, posture, eye contact, humor, timing and changes in another person’s emotional state.
Those abilities develop partly through experience.
Social media also creates another challenge: constant comparison.
Instead of comparing ourselves primarily with classmates, coworkers or neighbors, we can compare ourselves with hundreds of carefully selected images of other people’s lives.
Their friendships look better.
Their vacations look better.
Their relationships look better.
Everyone appears to be invited somewhere.
For someone already having difficulty connecting with others, scrolling through these images can reinforce the belief that everyone else has figured out relationships except them.
We Should Talk About Challenges With Social Connection Differently
One of the most helpful things parents, teachers, therapists and friends can do is normalize the experience without minimizing it.
Instead of:
“Why can’t you just go talk to them?”
Try:
“Starting conversations can feel uncomfortable when you haven’t had much practice. Let’s figure out one small way to make it easier.”
Instead of:
“You need to be more outgoing.”
Try:
“You don’t need to become the most outgoing person in the room. You just need to learn how to connect with people in a way that feels like you.”
We should also be careful with labels.
When someone repeatedly says, “I’m socially awkward,” the description can gradually become an identity.
A more useful perspective might be:
“Connecting with people is difficult for me right now, but social confidence is something I can practice.”
That small shift matters.
Social Skills Are Skills
We sometimes treat social ability as something people either have or don’t have.
But many aspects of social interaction are learned behaviors.
People can practice:
- Introducing themselves
- Asking open-ended questions
- Showing interest in another person
- Listening without planning their next response
- Joining conversations
- Reading body language
- Handling silence
- Making invitations
- Accepting invitations
- Giving compliments
- Expressing disagreement respectfully
- Recovering from an awkward moment
- Handling rejection
- Setting boundaries
- Repairing relationships after conflict
You don’t learn these things by reading about them alone.
You learn them by doing them.
How Can We Help Someone Who Has Difficulty With Social Connection?
The goal isn’t to eliminate every uncomfortable feeling before someone socializes. If we wait until anxiety completely disappears, we may wait forever.
Instead, we can help people learn that they can experience discomfort and still participate.
Start small.
Someone with significant social anxiety probably shouldn’t begin by forcing themselves to attend a huge party alone.
They might begin by saying hello to someone at school, asking a coworker a question, ordering food in person instead of through an app or having a five-minute conversation without looking at their phone.
Then gradually increase the challenge.
This approach is similar to principles used in cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure-based treatments for anxiety: approaching manageable situations instead of repeatedly avoiding them.
Put the Phone Away Sometimes
We don’t need to eliminate technology.
We do need opportunities to exist without it.
Try phone-free:
- Family dinners
- Car rides
- Walks
- Meals with friends
- Waiting rooms
- Social gatherings
- The first 30 minutes after school
- Portions of weekends
Those moments create opportunities for conversation, observation, boredom and connection.
All of those experiences matter.
Create Repeated Opportunities for Connection
Friendships usually aren’t created through one dramatic interaction.
They develop through repeated contact.
Sports, clubs, volunteer activities, classes, community organizations, hobbies and group therapy can provide something especially valuable: seeing the same people repeatedly while doing something together.
That removes some of the pressure to simply “go make friends.”
Connection can develop naturally over time.
When Challenges With Social Connection Become Social Anxiety
Feeling nervous socially doesn’t automatically mean someone has social anxiety disorder.
But professional support may be helpful when fear of social situations begins interfering with school, work, friendships, dating, family relationships or everyday activities.
Signs may include:
- Regularly avoiding social situations
- Significant fear of embarrassment or judgment
- Physical anxiety before social events
- Frequently canceling plans because of anxiety
- Difficulty speaking in groups or classes
- Excessive rumination after conversations
- Wanting friendships but feeling unable to develop them
- Increasing isolation or loneliness
- Depression or low self-esteem related to difficulty connecting with others
Therapy can help identify whether anxiety, past experiences, self-esteem, communication difficulties or another factor is contributing to the problem.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), exposure-based strategies, mindfulness, individual therapy and group therapy can all be useful depending on the person’s needs.
Connection Doesn’t Require Perfection
Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions about socially confident people is that they always know what to say.
They don’t.
They say awkward things.
They misunderstand people.
They tell jokes that don’t land.
They get rejected.
They occasionally stand alone at parties.
The difference is often not the absence of awkwardness. It’s the willingness to tolerate it.
Real relationships require uncertainty.
We cannot completely control whether someone likes us, responds to our message, invites us somewhere or wants to become our friend.
Learning to tolerate that uncertainty is an important part of emotional development.
And in a generation where technology increasingly allows us to edit, delete, filter and carefully manage how we present ourselves, real-world relationships remain wonderfully unedited.
They require practice.
They require vulnerability.
And sometimes they require being willing to feel awkward for a few minutes.
Challenges with social connection don’t have to define someone. With understanding, repeated practice, supportive relationships and professional help when needed, social confidence can grow.
The goal isn’t to become the most social person in the room.
The goal is to become comfortable enough being yourself that you can connect with the people in it.
References
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2023.
- American Psychological Association. Health Advisory on Social Media Use in Adolescence.
- Pew Research Center. Teens, Social Media and Technology 2024.
