How to make friends as an adult: the 50-hour rule and 7 places to start

Making a friend after school ends is mostly a matter of hours. In a 2018 study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Jeffrey Hall, a communication professor at the University of Kansas, put the price of a casual friend at about 50 hours together.

That’s good news if you’ve ever felt you lack the charm for it, because hours are something you can schedule. Pick one activity that meets every week and go six weeks in a row before you judge it.

How many hours a friend takes

Hall surveyed 355 adults who had recently moved to a new city and followed 112 first-year students at the university. The university’s summary rounds the results to about 50 hours for a casual friend, about 90 for a friend and more than 200 for a close friend. All are totals since the day two people met.

For the adults who had moved, it took longer: about 94 hours for a casual friend, 164 for a friend and 219 for a close friend. At those totals, Hall’s statistics gave better-than-even odds that the person counted as a casual friend, a friend or a close friend.

Both series count total hours together since meeting. The university’s figures are its rounded summary of the study.

Treat 50 hours as the floor, and if you’re new in town, plan for closer to 100.

In Hall’s data, hanging out, joking around and catching up on each other’s lives moved people closer, while time spent working or sitting in class together did much less.

At two hours a week with the same person, you’d reach 50 hours in 25 weeks, about six months. Six weeks is enough to see whether the same people keep coming back.

Three conditions a good place meets

In a 2012 New York Times article, Rebecca G. Adams, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, summed up three conditions that sociologists have tied to close friendship since the 1950s. You need to be near each other, to run into each other again without anyone arranging it, and to be somewhere relaxed enough that people talk about their lives.

In school and at a first job, you got all three without trying. As an adult you often don’t.

The US Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory on loneliness found that Americans spent about 20 minutes a day with friends in person in 2020, down from 60 minutes in 2003.

We scored the seven places below on those three conditions. “Near” means close enough to your home or work that going is easy.

Our scores, based on how each setting usually runs. A weekly hobby club or a chatty block can score higher.

1. A class that meets every week

A class with a fixed start date and a set number of sessions is the easiest place to begin. Everyone arrives new at the same time, and the same people come back each week.

Give it more than the first night. In a 2015 study in Royal Society Open Science, a team led by Eiluned Pearce, with Oxford anthropologist Robin Dunbar, followed new adult education classes for seven months. People in singing classes felt close to their group fastest, and by the third month the crafts and creative writing classes had caught up.

Two adult students at side-by-side pottery wheels laugh as they hold up their lopsided clay bowls, with a window onto a river behind them Pottery, like the crafts classes Pearce’s team followed, keeps your hands busy while you talk.

Arrive 10 minutes early and stay for coffee afterward. That loose time counts as hanging out, the kind of hour that moved people closer in the Kansas study.

2. A volunteer shift with the same crew

AmeriCorps reported that about 75.7 million Americans, or 28.3% of the population, volunteered through an organization in 2023.

If you want friends out of it, sign up for a fixed shift.

One-off volunteer days are the weakest option on this list, since you meet a crowd of strangers once and may never see them again. On a standing Tuesday evening at a food pantry, or with the same Saturday crew on a park trail, you work beside many of the same people every week.

Two volunteers standing in a clear creek lift a flat stone together while a third leans on a shovel beside a wheelbarrow of gravel on the bank On a standing crew you see the same faces every shift, the repeated contact Adams described.

Working side by side also makes talking easier. With a task in your hands, a quiet stretch feels normal, and people start chatting without forcing it.

3. A rec sports league

In a league you get a team, a season and a weekly game, and many adult leagues run a casual division for beginners. Go to every game, and you’ll see the same people each week without anyone having to make plans.

Fewer people play this way than they used to. In his 1995 essay “Bowling Alone”, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam reported that from 1980 to 1993 the number of Americans who bowled rose by 10%, while league bowling fell by 40%.

Two softball teammates in matching chartreuse shirts high-five on the sideline while a runner heads to first base and teammates cheer from a bench by a river Hours like these, spent playing and joking, were the kind that moved people closer in the Kansas study.

The time around the game counts too. Warm-ups, the bench between innings and the stop for food afterward are all hanging-out time.

4. A faith or community group

If you belong to a congregation, you already have a place that meets all three conditions. It gathers weekly, it’s usually close to home, and many congregations run smaller groups where people talk about their lives.

Gallup found that membership in a church, synagogue or mosque fell from 70% of US adults in 1999 to 61% in 2010 and 47% in 2020.

2020 was the first year in Gallup’s eight decades of tracking that membership fell below half.

If faith isn’t part of your life, look for the same shape in a neighborhood association, a library friends group or a community choir. Before you join, check three things. Does it meet at least twice a month, is there time to talk before or after the formal part, and do the same people come back?

5. Your neighbors and your block

On your block you can run into people without planning it, as long as you’re outside when they are. Still, only 26% of US adults know all or most of their neighbors, according to a Pew Research Center survey from March 2025. In the same survey, 59% said they have a neighbor they’d feel comfortable asking to keep a set of their keys for emergencies.

Knowing a block well is rarer than trusting one person on it, which is the easier place to start.

If you have that neighbor, start there.

To see the people on your block more often, walk at the same hour each day, garden in the front yard or sit on the stoop after dinner. Once a few of those chats feel easy, turn one into a small plan, like a shared meal or help with a project.

6. A hobby club that meets in person

A club built around a hobby scores best on the relaxed condition. With chess, running, knitting, board games or birding, you always have something to talk about besides yourself, and the first few meetings feel less awkward.

Check how often it meets. At a monthly two-hour meeting, you’d log 24 hours a year, under half of Hall’s 50. Meeting weekly, you’d log 104.

Example: hours a year at one club, with no missed meetings and no time added outside it.

If the club you like meets monthly, go to every meeting and add an outing with a member in between.

7. Coworkers, outside work hours

If you work full time, you spend about 40 hours a week near the same people. Even so, a Gallup survey from June 2022 found that only 2 in 10 US employees said they definitely had a best friend at work.

Each figure stands for 1 in 10 US employees in Gallup’s June 2022 survey. The two highlighted figures said they definitely had a best friend at work.

At work you see the same people nearby every day, yet you’re rarely relaxed there, and in the Kansas study, hours spent working together did little for closeness.

Hall’s advice in the university’s release is specific. “If you work together, go to lunch or out for a drink.” A weekly one-hour lunch with the same two coworkers adds up to 52 hours in a year.

Do this first

Open your calendar and block the same two-hour slot for each of the next six weeks. Then choose the one place from this list that fits it.

If your loneliness feels heavy or lasts for months, talk with your doctor or a licensed counselor too.

Around week four, pick the one or two people you’re happy to see each time. Among the first-year students Hall followed, those who moved up a friendship stage doubled or tripled their time with that person within three weeks. Ask one of them to something outside the usual setting, like coffee after class or a walk on the weekend.