How to make friends as an adult: why it gets harder and what actually works

In short

Making friends gets harder after your student years, and that is not your fault. Friendship grows out of proximity and repeated, unplanned contact, exactly what a school or campus arranges for you and adult life does not. Research by communication scholar Jeffrey Hall shows it takes roughly 50 hours together to move from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 hours to become real friends and more than 200 hours for a close friendship. You are not alone in this either: worldwide, about 1 in 6 people feels lonely. What actually works is less exciting than you hoped, and more effective: see the same people more often, do something together instead of talking about yourself, and share something real one step at a time.

Why it used to happen on its own

Think back to how you met the friends you have now. Probably not because you decided to make a friend. You sat next to someone in class. You lived on the same hallway. You saw each other every Tuesday at the same training. And at some point, without anyone announcing it, you were friends.

That is no accident. Social psychologists call it the propinquity effect: the odds of a friendship forming depend heavily on how often you run into someone without planning it. The classic study dates back to 1950, when Leon Festinger and his colleagues mapped who became friends with whom in a student housing complex. The result was sobering. Shared interests and personality did not predict friendship best. The distance between front doors did.

Proximity alone is not enough. Three things have to come together. You run into each other regularly. That contact is unplanned, so nobody has to organise anything. And the setting feels safe enough to let your guard down.

School, university and your first side job hand you all three for free. Then they disappear almost at once. You move, you work, your calendar fills up with things that have to happen. The accidental contact falls away, and what replaces it is far more uncomfortable: from now on you have to organise friendship deliberately. Make plans. Suggest things. Ask whether someone feels like it.

That feels like failing. As if you have somehow lost the knack. But nothing about you has changed. Only the circumstances in which friendship used to grow on its own are gone.

How much time does a friendship actually take?

This is where it gets concrete. Jeffrey Hall, professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, studied in 2018 how many hours people spend together before they start calling each other friends. Among others, he followed people who had just moved and therefore had to start over.

From	To	Roughly needed
Acquaintance	Casual friend	50 hours
Casual friend	Real friend	90 hours
Real friend	Close friend	more than 200 hours

Read that table again, because there is something freeing in it. Fifty hours is not nothing, but it is not a mystery either. It is coffee once a week for a year. It is a ten week course. It is playing sport three times a month for six months.

Two caveats. Hours at work count for less, because there you are both busy with something that has to be done rather than with each other. And it is about free time in which your attention is on the other person, not about sitting in the same room.

What these numbers mostly do is move the problem. The question is no longer "why is there no click". The question is: do I run into this person often enough to ever spend fifty hours with them? For most people you meet once, the answer is no. Not because there was anything wrong with the meeting.

You are not the only one

The feeling that everyone around you has a full circle of friends and you do not is almost never accurate. The numbers say something different.

In June 2025 the World Health Organization published a major report on social connection. Worldwide, roughly 1 in 6 people feels lonely. Among young people and young adults the share tends to be higher rather than lower. In the Netherlands, about 10 percent of people aged 15 and over felt strongly lonely in 2024, according to the national statistics office CBS.

The WHO also links social disconnection to an estimated 871,000 deaths a year. That is an estimate and an association, not a proven cause, and it is worth keeping that distinction sharp. A large meta-analysis by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues from 2015 painted a similar picture: loneliness is associated with roughly a 26 percent higher risk of early death.

Online you often come across the line that loneliness is as deadly as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. That comparison simplifies a study that measured something else, namely a lack of social relationships, and that compared effect sizes rather than counting cigarettes. The point stands, but you can forget the cigarettes.

What it comes down to: if you find it hard to meet new people, you are part of a very large group that happens not to say so out loud. We wrote earlier about how Mittir contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals, including tackling exactly this problem.

What actually works

There is a genre of advice that amounts to "go to a meetup and be yourself". That is not advice, that is encouragement. Here is what the research points to.

Repetition beats intensity

One great evening with someone is worth less than six ordinary Tuesdays. That follows directly from both the propinquity effect and Hall's hour count. You do not build a friendship in a peak. You build it in repetition.

In practice this means: choose things that recur. A weekly training over a festival. A book club over a one off drink. A fixed sports group over scattered plans. Anything that happens again by itself does the work the campus used to do.

Doing something together beats talking about yourself

It is easier to stand next to someone than across from them. If you are both busy with something, cooking, climbing, walking, repairing, conversations happen without having to be conducted. Silences go unnoticed. There is always a subject.

A shared activity also solves the hardest problem: it gives you a reason to see each other again next week, without anyone having to make that a big deal.

Share something real, one step at a time

In 1997 Arthur Aron and colleagues had strangers ask each other 36 increasingly personal questions over 45 minutes. A control group made small talk for 45 minutes. The first group felt considerably more connected afterwards.

This is about the feeling of closeness right after the conversation, not about proven lasting friendship, and certainly not about the popular twist that it makes you fall in love. But the underlying mechanism is real: escalating, mutual self-disclosure speeds up connection. Someone shares something small and true, you do too, and slowly you get somewhere.

That does not mean putting your childhood on the table over the first coffee. It means going one layer deeper than the weather, and seeing whether the other person follows.

Let time exist without a purpose

The third condition for friendship, a setting where people let their guard down, cannot be forced. You can only make room for it. That means plans without an agenda, evenings allowed to run late, and accepting that the first few times are a little awkward.

Awkwardness is not a sign that it is not working. Awkwardness is what happens just before it works.

Why a photo is the worst possible starting point

Almost every app that promises to help you meet new people starts with a photo. You see a face, you decide in a fraction of a second, and only then do you look for anything more. Usually you never get to that more.

Hold that up against what we just walked through. Friendship comes from repeated contact, shared activity and slowly built self-disclosure. A photo predicts none of the three. It only predicts whether someone finds your face appealing enough to keep reading.

Worse: judging on looks makes invisible exactly the people you could have talked to for hours. Someone you would have scrolled past turns out to be the person you click with in conversation. And the other way round.

That is why Mittir keeps your photo hidden at first. You get to know someone through interests and through what they say. You start with a conversation, or with something you are going to do together. You share your photo only when you are both ready. That is not a gimmick, it is the whole idea, and we wrote about it at length in why Mittir exists.

Mittir is not a dating app. You use it to meet new people and friends, and to do things together. Whether more comes of it is up to you.

How to start this week

No inspiration, just something to do.

1. Pick one thing that recurs weekly. Not something new and grand. A sport, a course, a volunteering slot, a fixed evening. The test is not whether it sounds fun, but whether the same people will be there again next week.
2. Go four times before you judge how it is going. The first time is always strange. The fourth time someone recognises you. That is the whole difference.
3. Make the second invitation. Most budding friendships die because nobody suggests a second time. Be the one who does. It feels more vulnerable than it is.
4. Say one thing you would not normally say. Small is fine. What was on your mind that week, what you were afraid of, what made you happy. See what the other person gives back.
5. Count in months, not evenings. Fifty hours is half a year of attention. Anyone who concludes after three meetings that there is no click stops exactly too early.

Frequently asked questions

Is it normal to struggle to make friends as an adult?

Yes. The conditions that made friendship effortless at school and university, repeated and unplanned contact in a familiar setting, almost entirely disappear afterwards. Finding it harder says something about your circumstances and nothing about you.

How long does it take to call someone a friend?

Research by Jeffrey Hall suggests roughly 50 hours spent together for a casual friendship, about 90 hours for a real friendship and more than 200 hours for a close one. Hours at work count for less.

I am shy. Does this still work?

Probably better than the alternative. Shy people in particular benefit from shared activities, because you do not have to perform in a conversation. You stand beside someone, you are both busy with something, and the talking starts by itself.

What if I just moved and know nobody?

Then you start with step one: pick something that recurs weekly in your new city. The first months feel empty, and that is exactly what you would expect if you take the hour table seriously. It is not a sign that this will not work out.

Is Mittir a dating app?

No. Mittir is made for meeting new people and friends and doing things together. Your photo stays hidden at first, so you get to know someone for who they are. Whether more comes of it is up to the two of you.

Sources

• Hall, J.A., How many hours does it take to make a friend?, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (2019)
• Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K., Social Pressures in Informal Groups (1950), the basis of the propinquity effect
• Aron, A. et al., The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (1997)
• WHO, Social connection linked to improved health and reduced risk of early death (2025)
• CBS, 10 percent of people aged 15 and over strongly lonely in 2024 (2025)
• Holt-Lunstad, J. et al., Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality, Perspectives on Psychological Science (2015)