72% of young Australians feel lonely. Here's why we're building Avilo.
The numbers are in and they're brutal. Young people have never been more 'connected' — and never felt more alone. We look at why, and what we're doing about it.
The Australian Loneliness Report is not comfortable reading. 72% of young Australians feel lonely at least sometimes. One in four feel lonely often. These aren't people who are isolated from technology — they're the most digitally connected generation in history.
That's the paradox we're building into. More followers, more group chats, more 'staying in touch' — and somehow, more alone. The phone that was supposed to bring us together is the same device we hide behind at dinner.
We spend an average of 7 hours per day on our screens. We spend an average of 27 minutes in meaningful face-to-face time with friends. The gap between those two numbers is where the loneliness lives.
Social media optimised for engagement, not connection. Every like, every notification, every infinite scroll is designed to keep you on the platform — not to help you feel less alone. The business model and the user's wellbeing are in direct conflict.
Avilo is built on a different premise: that the phone should help you put the phone down. Open the app, see who's nearby, make a plan, meet IRL, close the app. We measure success in meetups, not minutes. That's not a tagline — it's a product constraint we actually build around.
The loneliness epidemic isn't going away. But it's not inevitable either. It's a design problem. And design problems have design solutions.
Written by
Max Reid — Founder, Avilo