How to Make Friends as an Adult

For most of childhood, friendship comes with the timetable. You sit in the same rooms with the same people, five days a week, for years. Nobody has to plan it.

Then school ends, and so does the timetable. Adults have to create that contact on purpose. Very few of us were ever taught how.

This article sets out what the data shows about adult friendship, what research says it takes to make a friend, and a plain method you can start this week.

Adults report fewer close friends than in 1990

In May 2021, the Survey Center on American Life asked 2,019 US adults how many close friends they had. 12% said none. In a Gallup survey in 1990, 3% said none.

The change was larger among men. The share of men with no close friends rose from 3% to 15%. The share with at least six close friends fell from 55% to 27%.

These numbers are self-reported. The 1990 survey was done by phone and the 2021 survey online. The researchers note that people may be less willing to tell a live interviewer they have no friends, so part of the gap may come from the method.

Loneliness is now treated as a public health issue

In Gallup's 2023 and 2024 polling, 25% of US men aged 15 to 34 said they felt lonely “a lot of the previous day”. That compares with 18% of young US women and 17% of all other US adults.

In Canada, the figure for young men was 22%. Across the 38 OECD countries, the median for young men was 15%.

In June 2025, the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Connection reported that about one in six people worldwide experienced loneliness between 2014 and 2023. Rates were highest among teenagers aged 13 to 17 (20.9%), followed by young adults aged 18 to 29 (17.4%). The commission estimated that loneliness is linked to about 871,000 deaths a year, based on 2014 to 2019 data.

In the US, the Surgeon General issued a formal advisory on loneliness and isolation in 2023. That kind of advisory is reserved for significant public health problems that need the nation's immediate attention.

Why it gets harder after school

School and work do something we rarely notice. They put us near the same people again and again, without anyone having to arrange it.

That is where most close friendships start. Among Americans with close friends, 54% met one at their own or a spouse's workplace. 47% made a close friend at school. Only 8% made one online.

When you graduate, move, change jobs or start working from home, that steady contact stops. In 2021, 22% of Americans said it had been at least five years since they last made a new friend.

A close friend takes about 200 hours

Communication researcher Jeffrey Hall at the University of Kansas set out to measure how much time friendship takes. He surveyed 355 adults who had moved in the previous six months. He then followed 112 first-year university students over their first nine weeks of term.

Combining both studies, he estimated it takes about 40 to 60 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend. It takes 80 to 100 hours to become friends, and more than 200 hours to become close friends.

The kind of time matters. Leisure time, such as hanging out, joking around or playing games, predicted closer friendships. Hours spent working side by side counted for less.

The arithmetic explains why adult friendship feels slow. At 3 hours a week, 200 hours takes about 15 months. One good conversation is a start, not a friendship. The hours have to keep adding up.

Other people like you more than you think

One reason adults stall is fear that the other person was only being polite. Research suggests that fear is usually wrong.

In a 2018 set of studies, researchers led by Erica Boothby had people talk with someone new. Afterwards, people consistently underestimated how much their partner liked them and enjoyed their company. The researchers called this the liking gap.

The gap showed up between strangers in a lab, among first-year college students getting to know their dorm mates, and among adults at a workshop. For the dorm mates, it lasted for several months.

A second line of research looked at reaching out. In a set of preregistered experiments published online in 2022, Peggy Liu and colleagues found that people underestimate how much others appreciate a short check-in message or a small gift. The gap was larger when the two people were less close.

Together, these findings point the same way. The person you are nervous about contacting is likely to be more pleased than you expect.

The method: show up, start, follow up

The research points to three habits: repeated contact, starting things and following up. Here they are as steps.

1. Choose one setting you can return to every week. A class, sports team, choir, volunteer shift, faith group or club all work. The point is to see the same people again.
2. Learn names and use them. Ask one question, then a second question about the answer.
3. Be the one who starts. Say hello first. The liking gap research suggests the other person probably enjoyed talking with you more than you think.
4. Change the setting. After a few conversations, invite one person to something specific, with a day and a time: coffee after the session, a walk, a game. Hall gives similar advice: if you work together, go to lunch or out for a drink.
5. Follow up within a few days. A short message is enough, such as “Good to see you on Thursday” or a link you think they would like.
6. Repeat with the same people. Contact that repeats is what turns 5 hours into 50, and 50 into 200.
7. Accept that some will not take. Both people have to want the friendship. If someone keeps declining without offering another time, put your energy into someone else.

What school leaves out

Schools provide the daily contact that builds friendships. What they rarely teach is the skill behind it, because the timetable makes that skill unnecessary until the day it stops.

That skill can be learned like any other. Introducing yourself, walking into a room of strangers, making an invitation and keeping in touch are concrete steps you can practise. The Undertaught Manual covers each one, starting with the lessons below.

If loneliness feels heavy or does not lift, tell a doctor or someone you trust. If you are struggling or thinking about suicide, call or text 988 in the US or Canada, at any time, day or night.