Making friends on adult mode

Movies would have us believe that the one relationship certain to bring us lasting happiness is a romantic partner. Yet if we think about the relationships that accompany us through every stage of life, most are our friendships. 

An extensive body of research has confirmed that social connections are more than just a nice-to-have. For instance, one long-running study led by UVA psychology professor Joseph Allen (Col class of ’80), which has followed a cohort of nearly 200 participants from their early teens into their 40s, has gathered robust data to demonstrate how strong connections benefit our health, well-being and success. Another study published in 2025, led by a researcher at Cornell University, suggests that social connections can even help slow the aging process. 

It’s worrisome, then, that more of us appear to be struggling to make and maintain social connections, so much so that the World Health Organization in June called social disconnection “a serious threat to global health.” Trends in social isolation in the U.S., such as the decline in marriage and increase in single-person households, have been rising for decades. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, which highlighted the decline in social engagement in the U.S., was published a quarter-century ago. 

Still, a recent convergence of trends seems to have accelerated the problem. These include the explosive growth in digital technologies, the time demands of hustle culture and intensive parenting, the decline in social trust (barely one-third of Americans in a 2018 survey agreed that “most people can be trusted,” according to the Pew Research Center), and the still-to-be-understood aftereffects of a worldwide pandemic. 

“Loneliness and social disengagement have hit an all-time high in the last decade among most age cohorts for a lot of different reasons that are both internal and environmental in our society,” says Sareena Chadha (Col class of ’21, Grad class of ’24, class of ’28), a Ph.D. candidate in the social psychology program who studies social connection.

If you’re feeling that your own social connections aren’t what you’d like them to be, how can you build more of them? UVA researchers and professors offer insights on the challenges that hold us back, along with tips for creating, deepening and sustaining the connections that help us thrive. 

Evaluate your friendship goals

There’s no ideal number of friends. Some people are happy with one or two close friends, while others like being part of a larger social group. “It’s all about what you need and what you feel you have,” Chadha says. “One definition of loneliness is that your desired social connections don’t match your actual social world.” 

Even if you have a great friend or a devoted partner, it’s important to recognize that no one person can fulfill all our connection needs, says Bethany Teachman, professor of psychology and director of clinical training for the psychology department. One friend might be great for a long heart-to-heart, but you might also want to find someone who could share your enthusiasm for pickleball or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ask yourself what aspects of your connection needs are working well and what aspects are not, suggests Teachman. Then “put yourself in environments where it is more likely you’ll have opportunities.” 

Start a conversation

No time in your schedule to add new activities? You can take advantage of the places where you already encounter people. The next time you’re standing on the sidelines at your kid’s soccer game or microwaving lunch in the office break room, try striking up a conversation with someone you might like to get to know better. 

Easier said than done, you might think. What do I say? What if I make a social gaffe?

“It is easy to invent reasons why it will be difficult,” confirms Chris Welker, a postdoctoral research associate in the psychology department’s Emotion and Behavior Lab who studies conversation and how it relates to connection. “When we have a dearth of information about interacting with someone, we tend to be pessimistic about how it is going to go.” 

He’s been surprised to find in his research just how common that pessimism is. “People tend to think their conversational skills are worse than their other everyday skills,” he says. 

But if you think about all the conversations you’ve ever had with strangers, how many have gone badly? “Once you get into the conversation,” Welker says, “it tends to be easier than we expect.”

Welker is particularly interested in how conversation both shapes and reflects the closeness of relationships and how, as a stranger becomes an acquaintance and then a friend, you build a shared history and insider language of jokes and references. But first, “there are these barriers that we have internally that have to be overcome in order to get to those conversations.”

Research has not yet revealed, he acknowledges, the perfect conversation-starter in every situation. On the other hand, you don’t have to come armed with brilliant bon mots. Even topics as innocuous as the weather or your favorite coffee order “can be a way to learn about your partner and reveal some information about yourself,” he says. “They can be more than small talk; they can be easy segues into deeper topics.” 

Show genuine curiosity toward the other person, really listen to their responses and be willing to share something of yourself as well. Then every conversation you have “provides fodder for future conversations,” Welker says. “Use what you hear to perhaps dig into something deeper.”

Even if most casual encounters never develop beyond the occasional friendly chat, “Recognize that, just like dating, it is not necessarily the case that the first date is the person you spend your life with,” Teachman says. By making a small effort to get to know someone better, you’re still strengthening your social skills and opening yourself up to friendship opportunities. 

After all, every one of our friends was once a stranger. “You are not going to know in advance,” Teachman says.

Even the small daily encounters we have add to our well-being. Researchers at the University of British Columbia, among others, have confirmed the power of these “weak ties” through several studies. “Putting yourself out there and having the social exchange, even with casual interactions, has positive benefits,” Teachman says. 

Take it step by step

A chat in the break room or at preschool pickup is pleasant, but how do you take the next steps that could turn an acquaintance into a friend? 

It might seem obvious, researchers say, but when it comes to building connection, somebody has to go first.

Taking a friendship deeper can feel even more anxiety-inducing than starting a conversation. When you think about asking Darren from IT if he’d like to train together for a 5K, suddenly you’re 10 years old again. Just as we can convince ourselves that we’re uniquely terrible at starting a conversation, so too, says Teachman, are we prone to assume that everyone else is brimming with the confidence and social savvy we lack. 

Her research focuses on social anxiety, which is far more common than most of us might imagine. “We are constantly dealing with ambiguity in social situations,” she says. “We don’t have instant feedback, and we are constantly trying to read social cues.” One result, she says, is that people tend to overestimate both their own inabilities and other people’s social success.

“The issue is not that you feel anxious. Anxiety doesn’t have to be that big a deal,” she says. “It’s that you let the anxiety make choices for how you interact.”

She recommends thinking of the process of building connection as a hierarchy of steps. “You don’t have to do the hardest thing right away,” she says.

So “going first” at your kid’s soccer game could be simple. “I can just say ‘Hello’ and ‘How was your weekend?’” Teachman says. “That’s a step.” Then the next time, you might set your chair down next to that other parent’s and challenge yourself to talk with them a little more. And when you’ve gotten more comfortable, you could suggest taking the kids out for ice cream after the game. 

It might feel awkward, but “an interaction doesn’t have to go perfectly to be valuable and lead to a deeper connection,” Teachman says. And she stresses that feeling anxious is a normal response to doing something challenging. “That doesn’t mean anything is wrong. It’s just a hard thing to do,” she says. 

Practice ‘radical kindness’

Sometimes things won’t go well. Maybe you hit it off with someone at a party, but they never reply to your invitation to get together. Or you blurt out an awkward comment to a new acquaintance. When that happens, just take it in stride, the researchers advise.

Once again, Teachman says, we tend to imagine everyone is noticing or judging us much more than is actually the case.

“It leads people to assign really negative meanings to a situation that isn’t that terrible,” she says. 

“Sometimes you are going to get it wrong,” says Alison Nagel (Col class of ’10, Grad class of ’15, class of ’20), an assistant professor in the psychology department.

Also, don’t assume it’s about you. “You’re at your kid’s soccer game and you make an offer, like ‘I can bring coffee,’ and for some reason that is not reciprocated. That can be so rough,” Nagel says.

Her advice is to practice “radical kindness” and recognize that you can’t know what the other person is going through at that moment. Maybe they just received bad news, they’re stressed about a new job or they had a fight with their partner. Radical kindness means “assuming the best intentions, assuming that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have,” Nagel says. 

And finally, remember that time-immemorial advice: There are plenty more fish in the sea. “Flaming out is part of figuring out who you do connect with,” Chadha says. “It would be maladaptive to befriend every person you meet.”

Invest the time

When things do go right, be patient. “It is a tough ask to say the first time I go for coffee with someone that we will have deeply understood each other’s souls, or that it was all fun and wonderful,” Teachman says. 

Welker notes that research at the University of Kansas concluded that you need 50 hours just to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend, and as much as 200 hours to become close friends. Who has that much time in our overscheduled lives?

“The struggle is real,” Nagel says. Time for friends can seem like an unimaginable luxury. She recommends scheduling it the way you do any other important commitment. Put it on the family calendar where everyone can see it. When she gets together with two of her closest friends each month, “we make sure we have it on the calendar for the next month before we leave,” 
she says.

Welker equates social connection to working out. When it’s been a long day or a long week, it’s tempting to skip the gym. “You set aside time,” he says. “It is good for you even if you don’t want to go.”

And when you’ve put in the many hours it takes to build a friendship, try not to let it languish. “It is important not to let go of the people who have known you through many stages of your life,” Chadha says. “You can always make new friends, but you can’t make new old friends.”