There are few phrases more loaded, more fragile, more quietly dishonest than: “We should hang out soon.” It floats into the air at the end of dinners, at the bottom of voice notes, in the soft aftermath of accidental run-ins. It’s delivered with sincerity. Sometimes, even enthusiasm. And yet, everyone involved understands, on some cellular, culturally ingrained level, that this is less of a plan and more of a ritual. It’s not a lie, exactly. But it’s also not true. 

Welcome to friendship in your twenties: a place where affection is real, intentions are good, and execution is consistently underwhelming. Somewhere between adolescence, when friendships were built on proximity and shared schedules, and adulthood, where relationships require logistics, negotiation, and emotional labour, we developed a new social dialect. One that allows us to express care without commitment, closeness without calendar invites. “We should hang out soon” is its most fluent phrase.

If you zoom out, because everything becomes easier when you pretend you’re observing yourself from above like a detached anthropologist, this isn’t just about flakiness. It’s structural. We are the first generation to maintain friendships across infinite channels. We don’t just “have friends.” We maintain ecosystems: group chats, one-on-one threads, Instagram replies, voice notes we swear we’ll respond to, shared playlists that function as emotional placeholders. In other words, we are constantly in touch, but rarely together.

Sociologists might call this a shift from high-intensity, low-frequency interaction to low-intensity, high-frequency interaction. Which is a polite way of saying: we talk all the time and see each other almost never. And so, “we should hang out soon” becomes a kind of social glue. A way to reaffirm the bond without immediately confronting the logistical nightmare of actually living in the same place, having the same schedule, or possessing the same level of energy after 7 p.m.

It’s not that we don’t want to see each other. It’s that wanting is no longer enough. There was a time when friendship required very little planning. You simply were in the same place: school, university, that one kitchen where everyone ended up at 2 a.m. Now, every hangout is a negotiation with: work schedules that don’t align, side hustles we’re pretending are passions, gym classes, we booked to feel in control, the quiet but persistent desire to stay home and recover from existing

Friendship, once spontaneous, is now something you have to schedule. And scheduling, unfortunately, is where dreams go to die. “We should hang out soon” is often the emotional version of adding something to your cart and never checking out.

There’s also something slightly theatrical about it. We’ve inherited a culture that places enormous value on being perceived as a “good friend.” We celebrate birthdays, digitally, react to stories promptly, and send each other memes that say, “this is so us,” even if we haven’t seen each other in four months. So when we say, “we should hang out soon,” we are, in part, performing that identity. We are signalling: I care about you. It’s affection, filtered through optics. And to be fair, the affection is real. The problem is that modern life has stretched it so thin that it often exists more comfortably in theory than in practice.

What makes this phrase so fascinating is that it’s collaborative. Both people know. No one pulls out their phone and says, “Great, how’s next Thursday?” And if they do, it’s slightly jarring, like someone breaking character in the middle of a play. Instead, we nod. We smile. We say, “Yes, definitely.” We might even add, “text me!”

And then we don’t. Not because we’re bad people. Not because the friendship doesn’t matter. But because life resumes at full speed the second the conversation ends, and the intention quietly dissolves under the weight of everything else. It’s a socially accepted almost-lie. A soft promise designed to preserve connection without demanding immediate proof of it.

This is usually the part where the guilt creeps in. You start thinking about the people you do see regularly, usually whoever lives closest or requires the least planning, and then about the people you genuinely love but haven’t seen in months. Maybe longer.

You wonder if this is what “growing apart” feels like. Not dramatic endings or explosive fights, just a slow fade into mutual good intentions. But maybe the more uncomfortable truth is this: friendship in your twenties isn’t about constant presence. It’s about elasticity. Some relationships stretch. They go quiet. They survive on sporadic voice notes and the occasional “we really need to catch up.” And then, somehow, when you do finally sit down together, it still feels intact. A little different, maybe. But not gone. So what do we do? Start rejecting vague plans and demanding Google Calendar invites on the spot? Tempting. Unlikely.

For all its flakiness, this era of friendship isn’t empty. It’s just stretched across too many dimensions. We are trying to maintain deep, meaningful connections in a world that constantly fragments our attention. The fact that we still reach for each other, even clumsily, even vaguely, is something.

“We should hang out soon” may be a poor choice of words. A half-promise. A social placeholder. But underneath it is something real: a quiet insistence that, despite everything, distance, schedules, exhaustion, we are not done with each other yet. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, “soon” eventually becomes a date, a time, a place. And you sit across from each other thinking, oh. There you are. Like no time passed at all. Even though, of course, it did.

With Love, Chaos, and Jazz. Always.