What do you do when a friendship goes wrong? Do you call them up and explain how you were hurt - or do you stop replying to messages and remove them from your life entirely?
If you are a part of Gen Z, you might do the latter. Sociologist Jenny van Hooff recently published a paper exploring how our culture views ‘toxic friendships’[1] and found ‘dispiriting’ results. Toxic behaviour was described as anything ‘unsympathetic or simply negative’ and ending a friendship like this was seen as a ‘desirable… even courageous’[2].
In other words, our friendships are being valued to the degree that we benefit from them. People are cut off if they disturb your peace. Where we used to argue and work through conflict, now in the name of ‘self-care’ we just walk away. (And we wonder why we’re so lonely?[3]).
