Belonging is one of those things we often notice most when it is missing.

It can come from family, friendship, culture, faith, a football club, a workplace, a neighbourhood or an online community. It can be rooted in where we live, who we spend time with, what we believe, or simply the feeling that there are people who understand us.

And despite living in an age where connecting with others has never been technically easier, belonging is not necessarily becoming easier to find.

In 2025, only 53% of Australians had weekly face-to-face contact with family or friends outside their household, down from 68% in 2019. Meanwhile, 17% of Australians report often feeling lonely, up from 13% in 2009.

Yet there is another side to the story. The Scanlon Foundation’s 2025 research found 54% of Australians participate in a social, religious, civic or political group, and people living in cohesive neighbourhoods were 65% more likely to report a strong sense of belonging in Australia.

Belonging isn’t disappearing. But where we find it, who we find it with and what holds communities together are changing.

Patterns: Belonging is built through participation

Across People, Government, Place and Brands, one pattern stands out: belonging rarely happens passively. It grows through repeated interaction and participation.

For people, friendship remains fundamental, but belonging extends beyond our closest relationships. Clubs, teams, workplaces, cultural communities and interest groups give people opportunities to be recognised by others and feel part of something larger than themselves. In 2025, 45% of Australians participated in social groups, while almost one-third undertook some form of informal volunteering.

Sport remains particularly powerful. 42% of Australians participated in sport or physical activity through an organisation in 2025, while 68% agreed sport is somewhere people can feel a sense of belonging and 73% said it is a good way to meet people and make friends.

For government, belonging increasingly matters because social connection supports broader social cohesion. Communities where people participate, volunteer and interact with neighbours tend to report stronger trust and belonging. Governments therefore influence belonging not only through social policy, but through investment in libraries, parks, sporting facilities, community centres and other infrastructure that creates opportunities for people to meet.

For place, the local neighbourhood remains remarkably important. In 2024, 81% of Australians said they felt a sense of belonging in their local neighbourhood, and 82% believed people in their area were willing to help their neighbours.

And brands increasingly attempt to tap into the same human desire. The strongest brand communities often give consumers something beyond a transaction: an identity, shared language, experience or group to participate in. From running clubs and gaming communities to fandoms and loyalty programs, consumption can become another way of signalling these are my people.

The pattern: Belonging is less about simply being surrounded by people and more about participating, being recognised and feeling that your presence matters.

Tensions: More ways to belong, but greater risk of disconnection

The paradox is that Australians now have more communities available to them than ever before, while some traditional sources of belonging are weakening.

Our social worlds have become more fragmented. Only 50% of Australians agreed in 2025 that most people can be trusted, down from 61% in 2020. Organised volunteering has also fallen from 30% of Australians in 2019 to 23% in 2025.

There is also a tension between belonging and exclusion. Every tribe creates an inside, and potentially an outside. Sporting rivalries, political identities, cultural communities and online fandoms can strengthen bonds between members while sharpening divisions with others.

Australia’s increasing diversity makes this especially important. More than half of Australians are either born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas, while 22.8% speak a language other than English at home.

This creates richer and more varied identities, but belonging is not experienced equally. The Scanlon Foundation’s 2025 research found that younger Australians, people experiencing financial hardship and those from non-English-speaking backgrounds reported lower levels of belonging.

Place introduces another tension. Regional communities often have stronger formal participation: volunteering through organisations reaches 34% in remote Australia compared with 21% in major cities. Yet smaller communities can also be difficult for people who feel different from dominant local norms.

For brands, the tension is authenticity. Communities cannot simply be manufactured by marketing departments. Attempts to borrow the language of belonging without genuinely investing in the people or values involved can feel transactional rather than communal.

The tension: We have more freedom to choose our tribes, but fewer assumptions that everyone around us belongs to the same ones.

Shifts: From inherited communities to chosen communities

Perhaps the biggest change is that belonging is becoming less prescribed and more assembled.

Historically, many communities were inherited through family, religion, neighbourhood, workplace or geography. Those structures have not disappeared, but Australians increasingly construct identities across multiple overlapping communities.

Religion provides one example. In 1996, around 17% of Australians reported having no religion; by the 2021 Census this had reached 38.9%. As one traditional institution of community becomes less universal, other forms of association—from sport and hobbies to cultural groups and online communities—can occupy more space.

Belonging is also becoming less geographically constrained. A person can simultaneously belong to their neighbourhood, workplace, cultural community, sporting club and a niche online community whose members live around the world.

For younger Australians in particular, the distinction between online and offline friendship is increasingly blurred. eSafety research has found young people can use online environments to form friendships and find communities unavailable locally, particularly those who may struggle to connect face-to-face. More recent eSafety research into Australia’s social-media age restrictions captures the tension clearly: some young people expect less social media to strengthen face-to-face relationships, while others fear losing communities in which they currently find belonging.

At the same time, local belonging may actually be becoming more important as national belonging becomes less certain. Scanlon research found the proportion reporting a high sense of belonging in Australia declined by 11 percentage points between 2021 and 2025, even as neighbourhood connections remained comparatively resilient.

For government, this shifts the challenge from simply creating services to creating the conditions for connection: accessible public spaces, community infrastructure, volunteering, sport, culture and opportunities for people from different backgrounds to interact.

For brands, it means moving from building audiences towards facilitating participation. The opportunity is not simply to tell consumers what a brand represents, but to give people genuine reasons to connect with one another around shared interests, experiences or values.

And for people, identity is becoming increasingly plural. We don’t necessarily belong to one tribe. We move between many.

The shift: Belonging is moving from something largely inherited through institutions and geography towards something increasingly chosen, layered and actively maintained.

Looking Ahead

Belonging has not disappeared in an increasingly individualised and digital world. It has become more complex.

Australians can now belong simultaneously to a suburb, sporting club, profession, cultural community, friendship group, fandom and online tribe. This gives people greater freedom to find communities that reflect who they are.

But it also makes belonging something that increasingly requires effort.

The challenge for the next decade may therefore be less about finding more ways to connect and more about creating the spaces, institutions and rituals that turn those connections into relationships.

Because ultimately, belonging isn’t simply about finding people who are like us.

It is about finding places where we feel that we matter.

Square Holes is a cultural insight studio.

We design mixed method explorations of people and culture beyond the category,  uncovering the patterns, tensions and shifts shaping behaviour to inform strategy, inspire innovation and enable confident decisions. Our studio model brings together the right mix of thinkers, researchers and specialists for each exploration. If you’re navigating change, entering a new market, or seeking deeper understanding of people and culture, let’s start a conversation >