YOU RARELY SEE YOUR FRIENDS ANYMORE—HERE'S WHAT THAT COULD SAY ABOUT YOU

Newsweek Exclusive Feature

TikTok creator Ali Soufan's viral video questioned if your adult friendships are genuine—and a psychotherapist spoke to Newsweek.

It is a modern ritual many adults know all too well: weeks of coordinating calendars just to grab coffee with a friend, only to spend the brief meetup rehashing the last three months in both your professional lives. Then, the cycle starts again.

A viral video has struck a chord among viewers online by suggesting that what passes for friendship in adulthood may not be friendship at all—and internet users are divided. Ali Soufan, a social-media marketer originally from Lebanon, ignited the discussion with his TikTok clip from April 4 under @becomingali.

"Meeting up with a friend once every one or two months to catch up about life and work, is not an actual friendship," Soufan said in the video. "The world that we live in and the way that our lives have just become about work, have forced us into a culture where we are constantly catching up with people and not actually developing meaningful friendships."

The video has been viewed more than 757,000 times to date, resonating with people navigating the blurred lines of adult connection in a hyper-scheduled world.

Soufan, who moved to England at 18, told Newsweek about the deeper origins of his post.

"My post was a response to the 'catch-up culture' that has come to dominate my adult social life in London, England," Soufan said. "I found myself stuck in a cycle of constantly catching up with friends on a superficial level instead of developing deep meaningful connections."

Soufan said the idea for the video emerged after a conversation with Lebanese friends who had also moved abroad.

"We were talking about how our friendships in the West feel so different from what we have back home," Soufan added. "A lot of us felt like our connections in the West, especially as adults, were very fragile and surface-level."

The contrast between his life in the U.K. and his experiences in Lebanon highlighted what he sees as a cultural disparity.

"In Lebanon, adults had a different approach to friendship where they would meet much more frequently, and work did not dominate their lives or conversations," Soufan said. "We realized the value in living in a small country like Lebanon, where going to a friend's house is only a five- or 10-minute drive away."

The video's popularity—and its polarizing reception—suggests it tapped into an unspoken tension. While some viewers embraced the call for more meaningful friendships, others defended the idea of low-maintenance bonds as realistic and valid.

"Although I do understand that not everyone's definition of friendship is the same," Soufan said, "the reaction did show me just how many people out there want deeper bonds with those around them but can't seem to find the right people to develop them with."

To better understand what infrequent friend meetups might indicate, Newsweek consulted Daren Banarsë, a senior psychotherapist also based in London, England.

Banarsë said he sees "catch up culture" as a reflection of broader psychological and social shifts.

"We have moved from community-based living where friendships were woven into daily survival, to individualistic lifestyles where friendship becomes another item on our productivity list," he added.

Banarsë emphasized that infrequent contact is not necessarily superficial.

"That initial download period isn't necessarily inauthentic; it's actually a crucial recalibration process where we're essentially saying, 'here's who I am now, do you still see me?'" he said.

Still, Banarsë noted a loss of a key relational skill: "Many adults have lost the skill of simply being with friends without an agenda or update to share."

From a clinical perspective, the problem is also physiological.

"When we're constantly in survival mode, our capacity for the kind of relaxed presence that deep friendship requires becomes severely compromised," Banarsë said.

The true issue, he added, is not frequency but emotional substance.

"Seeing friends only every few months isn't inherently problematic if the quality of connection remains rich," Banarsë concluded. "But the key question isn't, 'how often?' It becomes rather, 'how present and authentic are we when we do connect?'"

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