By Charlotte Massey and Aaron Hurst, Greater Good Magazine

Across the country, people are building communities around shared activities—and finding meaning, friendship, and belonging along the way.

A few years ago, Ren Yu was living in New York and, by most measures, doing well. He was productive and physically healthy, while building a life that made sense on paper. But something felt off.

What he was missing was harder to name. It was not a lack of activity or ambition. It was a lack of connection.

So he started something small. A philosophy group. No curriculum, no credentials required. Just people gathering to discuss a single idea at a time. One word, one question, and whoever showed up.

What began in apartments quickly outgrew them.

Within a year, the New York Philosophy Society was drawing well over a hundred people on a typical night, sometimes many more. Conversations unfolded in small circles across bars, restaurants, and event spaces, rotating every thirty minutes so that strangers could engage deeply and then meet someone new. The group now relies on a team of volunteers to host and facilitate, and has become one of the more surprising social phenomena among young New Yorkers looking for something more meaningful than a typical night out.

But what makes it compelling is not just the scale. It is the tone.

People show up not to perform or network, but to think together. To ask questions about truth, love, purpose, and meaning. To be taken seriously by people they just met.

“It was only after I started doing it,” Ren says, “seeing not only my own life changing, but also the people around me… that I realized the importance of connection.”

What began as a way to fill a gap in his own life became something much larger. A place where people who felt disconnected could experience something rare. Not just being around others, but being known by them. Ren’s story is not unusual.

Points of connection

Across the country, people are creating their own versions of Ren’s gathering. A weekly yoga gathering that grew from 20 people to hundreds showing up in a park. A fitness group where the real friendships form afterward over brunch. A community dinner where strangers end the night sharing stories they didn’t expect to tell.

Participation is not limited to one stage of life. While people in their 30s and early 40s participate at the highest rates, engagement is meaningful across all age groups, including those over 60. The desire for connection, and the ability to build it through shared activity, does not age out.

For many of us, connection used to be built into daily life. School, work, and family created regular opportunities to be around the same people again and again. Over time, relationships formed almost without thinking about it.

That structure has weakened. People move more often. Work is more transactional or remote. Fewer shared activities organize our time. As a result, connection is no longer ambient. It requires intention.

What is emerging in response is not just more socializing, but something more specific. People are building what we call communities of play, groups organized around shared activity.

That is one of the Six Points of Connection, a simple framework created by us at the U.S. Chamber of Connection to capture what people need to build a fully connected life. The six include having someone nearby you can rely on, consistent one-to-one relationships, a sense of belonging to a shared identity, a third place, a role in contributing to others, and being part of a group that gathers around a shared activity.

Among these, community of play often acts as the entry point.

Impact of connection

To understand its impact, we studied more than 2,000 adults across the United States, comparing those who regularly participate in activity-based communities with those who do not. We then interviewed 20 community builders and surveyed nearly 100 leaders like Ren to understand how these groups actually function.

We identified some distinct groupings, and the differences between them are significant.

People who participate in these communities are 28 percentage points more likely to report strong social support and 33 points more likely to report high life satisfaction. They are also more likely to trust others, to form relationships across differences, and to feel a sense of agency in their lives.

And yet only about 30 percent of people regularly participate in any kind of shared activity community.

Most people are not opting out because they do not want connection. They are running into friction. In our data, people who are not part of these communities are far more likely to say they feel uncomfortable showing up, unsure how to start, or worried they will not fit in. Cost and time play a role, but the biggest barriers are social and psychological.

This gap points to something important. The issue is not that we do not know how to build connections. It’s that most people are not engaging in the kinds of structures that make it possible.

One reason activity-based communities are so effective is that they lower the stakes of showing up. You do not have to arrive ready to connect. You arrive ready to do something.

Some are built around fitness or food. Others are built around ideas. Some are intentionally a little strange.

“I’ve always been interested in bringing people together to do kind of little weird things,” one builder says.

From there, connection can emerge more naturally.

This reflects a deeper insight from the science of play and social behavior. Researchers like Stuart Brown have argued that play is a primary way humans build trust and social bonds. It creates a state of openness and shared attention that makes people more receptive to one another. When people move, create, or learn together, they begin to synchronize, both emotionally and behaviorally.

Other researchers have found that shared activities accelerate what might otherwise take much longer to develop. Instead of relying on conversation alone, people build connection through experience. They have something to reference, something to return to, and something that brings them back again.

One community-builder describes it simply: The activity gets people in the door, but the real connection happens afterward, when people stay and talk.

That pattern shows up again and again: The activity is not the point—it’s the invitation. And for many people, that’s the easiest place to begin.

Changing relationships

The impact of these communities is not limited to individual well-being. They also shape how people relate to others.

In our study of community-builders, a large majority reported that their groups regularly bring together people across differences in age, race, socioeconomic background, and political identity. This kind of interaction is increasingly rare in everyday American life.

Sociologists often distinguish between bonding and bridging social capital. Bonding brings together people who are similar. Bridging connects people across lines of difference. Both matter, but bridging is especially important for building trust and resilience in a society.

What is notable about activity-based communities is that they often do both at the same time.

People come because of a shared interest, which creates an immediate sense of familiarity. But because the groups are open and fluid, they also create opportunities to encounter people who are different.

One participant described arriving at an event feeling isolated and unsure, only to realize that others felt the same way. There was a whole group of people who felt like that. They felt less alone immediately.

Another described how, over the course of an evening, conversations moved beyond small talk into something more meaningful. People began sharing stories about their lives, their families, and their struggles, often with people they had just met.

These are the moments when connection shifts from surface interaction to something more durable.

While much of the research focuses on the benefits for participants, our interviews highlighted something else. The act of creating community has its own impact.

Many of the builders we spoke with did not set out to become leaders. They were trying to solve something in their own lives. They wanted more connection, more meaning, or simply a place where they could belong.

In creating that space for others, they often found a deeper sense of purpose themselves.

One builder described finding a handwritten note after an event. Someone had written about how much the community meant to them and how lonely they had felt before finding it.

Experiences like this can be transformative. They shift how people see their role in the world. Instead of waiting for connection to appear, they begin to see themselves as someone who can create it.

Worth the effort

At the same time, this work is not effortless. Many builders invest significant time and energy, often without financial support. Some described the tension between wanting to participate as a member and feeling responsible for holding the space for others.

“I have a tendency to self-sacrifice,” one builder said. “I think at times I wish people knew what I’m putting into it.”

This tension points to something important. These communities are doing meaningful work, but they are largely unsupported.

For individuals, the lesson from this research is not that everyone needs to start a community. It is that connection is more accessible than it often feels.

The most effective entry point is a shared activity. Something simple, repeatable, and easy to join. A walk in the same place each week. A standing dinner. A regular gathering around a shared interest.

The goal is not to create instant closeness. It is to create a setting where familiarity can grow over time.

Psychologists have long emphasized the role of repeated exposure in forming relationships. Seeing the same people again and again, even in low-stakes settings, increases the likelihood of connection.

Activity based communities create that repetition in a natural way.

There is a tendency to look for large scale solutions to the problem of disconnection. New programs, new technologies, new policies.

Those may have a role to play. But what is already happening across the country suggests a more immediate path.

People are creating small, consistent spaces where others can gather. They are building connection through shared experience, not abstract intention.

Platforms like Heylo now support more than 20,000 of these communities, and the number continues to grow. Taken together, they represent a quiet but significant shift in how connection is formed.

Ren’s philosophy group is one example. It did not start as a solution to a national problem. It started as a response to a personal one.

That may be the most important insight.

If you want more connection in your life, the first step may not be to search for it. It may be to create a place where it can happen, and to invite others in.

 About the authors; Charlotte Massey is Co-Founder of the U.S. Chamber of Connection and founding Executive Director of the Seattle chapter, where she is helping build a new civic model for how cities strengthen social connection and trust.

Her work focuses on advancing social connection as essential civic infrastructure that shapes public health, economic mobility, and civic life. Through the Chamber of Connection, she works with government, employers, cultural institutions, and community organizations to develop scalable, measurable approaches to connection.

Aaron Hurst is a pioneer social entrepreneur and CEO focused on rebuilding human connection to strengthen communities. He founded the U.S. Chamber of Connection to address the national decline in social ties and trust. Previously, he founded the Taproot Foundation, sparking a $15B pro bono service movement, and led Imperative, which developed purpose profiling tools used by over 200 companies. He’s also co-founder of Board.Dev, connecting tech leaders to nonprofit boards. Keywords; wellbeing, psychology