Most of us have wasted time tweaking filters or attempting to write a caption that seems effortlessly clever.
Our feeds became labor intensive projects involving editing, cropping, and branding.
Naturally, that misdirected energy would eventually seep into real life.
Here we find ourselves
With a few clicks on platforms like RentAFriend.com or RentaCyberFriend.com, you suddenly have the option to hire someone by the hour.
Looking for a wedding companion? A nearby person to guide you around? A cozy presence at the table to avoid appearing like an outsider?
Odd as it may seem, it serves as an effective solution to the isolation embedded in contemporary living.
Yet something about it remains unsettling. If we pretend in parts of our identity online, why not extend that performance into the street as well?
So Why Is This a Thing Now
This didn’t emerge suddenly like a TikTok dance. Rather, it signals a more serious issue.
Experts at the Harvard Leadership and Happiness Lab have even labeled it a friendship recession.
Their 2025 study reads like a eulogy for connections.
Meanwhile the U S Surgeon General has warned that chronic loneliness impacts your health as severely as smoking a pack a day. Not figuratively. Equivalently.
Statistics show a clear trend. Among young adults, many report having no one they consider a genuine confidant.
Blame it on long work hours, frequent relocations or digital interactions overtaking face to face conversations.
For someone moving to a new city, overwhelmed by deadlines or struggling with social anxiety, hiring companionship begins to seem less humorous and more like a viable necessity.
Awkward as it may be, it fills a void.
The Invisible Cost
This is where everything shifts. The price isn’t the problem. The pain arrives later.
Picture hiring someone for an event. You connect well, share laughs and the atmosphere feels easy.
Then their time ends. They leave. You pay. Then silence. You return home. The quiet hits hard.
Many who use these services say what follows only highlights the loneliness they were trying to escape.
Acting as a friend for hire isn’t easy either. You must stay positive and engaged no matter what is happening in your personal life. It’s emotionally draining work.
Reviews on sites like Trustpilot are filled with complaints about delayed payments, unsafe meetings and situations that suddenly go wrong.
The platforms offer little genuine protection.
But the deeper issue is that it trains us to skip the gradual, messy, human process of building real relationships.
Why risk awkward first meetings or potential rejection when a curated companion is just a tap away?
And Then There’s the Deep End Renting an Entire Family
If hiring a companion seems unusual, Japan has long been ahead.
A company called Family Romance has been providing family rentals for years.
Real actors take on roles as spouses, parents or even children.
They attend gatherings, pose for photos and enact heartfelt moments, whatever the client wants the public to see.
It’s a real world dystopian scenario, yet it’s popular because it relieves genuine emotional pain such as loneliness, shame and complicated family dynamics.
With rising isolation in the U S, it’s easy to imagine similar services appearing in major cities soon.
But the moral concerns are heavy. What does it do to an actor who must cry at a stranger’s funeral?
What happens when the rented family feels better than your real one?
And treating a child actor like a rented object crosses into deeply disturbing territory.
What Is Our Next Step
The rise of these services should signal that something is going very wrong.
Instead of viewing paid companionship as just another delivery style service, we should ask why so many people feel compelled to rely on it.
What can we do to rebuild spaces like cafes, parks, bars and community spots where people naturally gather?
How do we improve access to mental health support without months long wait times?
How do we encourage people to engage in the difficult parts of forming friendships, including discomfort, miscommunication and vulnerability?
Because if we turn every human connection into a transaction, we’re losing something irreplaceable.
At some point we must ask what part of being human we are trading away for the swipe of a credit card.
And what do we lose when the answer becomes basically anything?
Sources & Further Reading
Harvard Leadership & Happiness Lab. “The Friendship Recession: The Lost Art of Connecting” (2025).
https://www.happiness.hks.harvard.edu/february-2025-issue/the-friendship-recession-the-lost-art-of-connecting
Office of the U.S. Surgeon General. “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” (2023).
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
Pew Research Center. “Who Are the Most Lonely Americans?” (2023).
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/who_are_the_most_lonely_americans
American Perspectives Survey. “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss” (2021).
https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-american-friendship-change-challenges-and-loss/
RentaCyberFriend Reviews. Trustpilot (2025).
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/rentacyberfriend.com
BBC Reel. “The Japanese Business of Renting a Family” (2019).
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07d23t6/a-rental-service-for-lonely-people
Unseen Japan. “The Company That Lets You Rent a Family” (2022).
https://unseen-japan.com/japanese-rental-family/
RentAFriend.com (Official Site).
RentaCyberFriend.com (Official Site).
