Can a friendship app cure loneliness?

I did not plan to spend the most romantic night of the year having dinner with strangers. But then a friend sent me a link to Timeleft. 

The app, which algorithmically matches six people to go for a meal together, seemed a better option than staying in. So, on Valentine’s Day, I arrive at Americana, a restaurant just off London’s Piccadilly Circus with a southern US theme. The two-for-one house cocktail, very pink and very sweet, is conspicuously named “Till the End of Time”. A singer in a nylon flamenco dress performs covers of love songs, urging the seated diners to join in. They do not. 

Timeleft was launched in London in January after starting in continental Europe, taking its place among a new group of start-ups seeking to innovate a way out of loneliness. It defines itself against social networks and apps that limit communication to our phones, staking a claim to opening the door to something new and real — “the magic of chance encounters” with “people you wouldn’t have met”, the website says. Its aim? “To combat loneliness, depression issues, and broken families.”

To get the conversation going, our table of thirtysomethings has been issued with a list of icebreaking questions. But for now, at least, we do not opt to explore each other’s childhood memories or views on whether friendships between men and women are possible. What really interests us is why we are here. 

“Meeting new people,” says Elena, who moved from Melbourne a few years ago and works in the food industry, inventing new products. “London’s a lonely city.”

All five of my companions are likeable and thoughtful. Three grew up overseas, all have lived here for years. We are mostly single. From small talk about white-collar jobs in tech and HR, it is difficult to know what else we have in common. The thread that runs through everyone’s story, woven into different cloth, is the desire for connection.

Elena misses the talking-to-strangers familiarity of…