{"id":521064,"date":"2026-04-09T08:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T08:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/521064\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T08:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T08:18:08","slug":"generation-lonely-the-group-helping-young-people-make-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/521064\/","title":{"rendered":"Generation lonely: The group helping young people make friends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">CircleUp was created by James Telfer, an architecture graduate who lives in Bath.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He came up with the idea in 2024 while travelling in South America. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 27-year-old said he had struggled to build friendships after moving to Bath, but found it easier to connect with people while abroad.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For a subscription fee, the app lists a range of events including pub nights out, sporting events, coffee mornings, board game nights and day trips.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Telfer said he had been &#8220;very worried&#8221; the scheme &#8211; which launched with a pub night in Bath &#8211; would not work.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I had no idea what would happen or whether it would just be a one-off and people would disappear and you wouldn&#8217;t see them again, but I think it kind of struck a chord with people,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s so hard to build up a great social life from scratch. The big insight of CircleUp is that it is providing social infrastructure.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CircleUp was created by James Telfer, an architecture graduate who lives in Bath. He came up with the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-521064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}