Mahika Hari

There's an entire genre for long-distance love. Advice columns, TikToks of couples counting down to airport reunions, friends debriefing me for an hour on how it's going with the boyfriend in another city. There is nothing like that for friends. Which is strange, because the same distance does the same damage, and it's happening to far more of us. The American Friendship Project found in 2024 that friends who live somewhere else are now about as common as friends who live nearby — over 40%...

A tool built to close distance is somehow producing it. So do we delete everything? Declare the group chat the enemy of real friendship?

Why leaving college feels like grief — and the behavioral science of how to pre-build adult friendships before graduation. Plus the NovaZoom proof of concept.