A North Carolina startup, Friending, has launched a social platform that aims to help people make friends by meeting in person rather than prolonged online conversations. The app, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, connects users by shared interests and geographic proximity, restricts chat functionality to push them towards face-to-face meetings. The company uses a third-party identity service to verify user's location and confirm when two users’ phones are physically near each other, a feature designed to verify that meetings actually occur. The launch comes after US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness and social isolation a public health epidemic, which carries health risks comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes per day. Despite this, Friend's founder, Gabor Kadas, has described the app as a response to personal experiences such as moving between countries and accumulating thousands of online connections while feeling increasingly isolated. The challenge for any friendship app is not just getting people to download it but getting them to use it more than once, but also making it more engaging. There are also questions about whether limiting online interaction can actually reduce loneliness.