How do you go about finding a friend during a pandemic? By the hour Operating under lockdowns and ever-changing social restrictions, many are puzzled by how to handle what some have said is an epidemic with a pandemic
Author of the article: Helena Skrinjar, Special to National Post
Publishing date: Feb 11, 2021 • February 12, 2021 • 8 minute read • A 2018 report found that it takes more than 200 hours to make a close friend. Photo by NP photo illustration
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Article content
By Helena Skrinjar
Article content
By Helena Skrinjar
In early October, I was paid US$60 to be someone’s friend. Other than jokingly claiming my role in any friendship was priceless, I hadn’t ever thought about how much I was worth. But that day, I found myself in Manhattan’s popular Meatpacking District, outside a trendy hotel, meeting a perfect stranger named Kenneth, whom I met on the RentaFriend.com website.
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It was started in 2009 by entrepreneur Scott Rosenbaum after reading about Japan’s popular “Rent A Family” companies, agencies that rent out people to act as substitute family members.
I Removed My Phone From the Bedroom for a Week. Here s What I Learned.
Tanner Garrity, provided by
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Five years ago, photographer Eric Pickersgill released a series of black-and-white images that depict Americans doing ordinary things: sitting around the dinner table, grilling in the driveway, suntanning on a boat. For each photo, though, there’s a catch Pickersgill’s removed their phones. Every single person in the stills is staring down at an empty hand.
The project is a chilling commentary on the most widespread addiction of our age. And in my opinion, it’s felt most acutely in this photo, where a husband and wife lie in bed, their backs to each other, squinting into their devices before they officially say good night. It hurts to look at because it’s so familiar. Most of us regularly begin and our days with our phones inches from our eyes.