Imagine moving to a city where you don't know anyone.
You have a job, an apartment, internet access, and a phone full of contacts.
You know where to buy groceries, how to order food, and how to find almost any information you need.
But who would you call on a Saturday afternoon?
Who would you go for coffee with, take a walk with, or invite to a concert?
And perhaps most importantly, where would you even meet someone who might one day become your friend?
Not a professional contact. Not an acquaintance with whom you exchange a few polite sentences.
Someone with whom, a few years from now, you might share memories, inside jokes, and the feeling that you've known each other forever.
It sounds like a simple question.
But try answering it.
Where do adults actually meet new people these days?
There was a time when meeting people didn't require a plan
Most of us didn't spend much time thinking about how to meet new people during childhood and early adulthood.
They were simply there.
At school. On the playground. In the neighbourhood. At university. At sports practice. In student accommodation.
We saw the same people almost every day, sometimes for years.
We didn't have to arrange special meetings or wonder whether we had enough time to build new friendships.
Proximity and repetition were part of everyday life.
Of course, friendships didn't happen automatically back then either. Not everyone felt a sense of belonging, and school or university could be deeply lonely environments for some people.
Still, those environments offered something that often becomes less common in adulthood: regular opportunities to get to know someone gradually, without much planning.
Then we finish our education.
We find jobs. Move to new places. Start families. Change careers or face new life circumstances.
Our days begin to follow a different rhythm.
And suddenly, we realise we're not meeting new people nearly as often as we used to.
How long does it actually take to become friends?
Researcher Jeffrey A. Hall of the University of Kansas asked an interesting question: how much time does it take for an acquaintance to develop into a friendship?
In a study first published online in 2018, he examined two groups: 355 adults who had recently moved and 112 first-year university students.
The findings revealed a strong association between the time people spent together and the closeness of their relationships.
Hall estimated that developing a casual friendship often takes approximately 40 to 60 hours together, a friendship around 80 to 100 hours, and a close friendship frequently more than 200 hours.
These are not universal rules or precise thresholds after which someone automatically becomes a friend. They are estimates from a specific study, and the quality of interactions, mutual interest, and circumstances of meeting also matter.
But let's imagine those numbers in everyday life.
If you meet someone for a one-hour coffee once a week, how long will it take to spend fifty hours together?
Almost a year.
Now imagine how much easier it was to create those opportunities when you sat in the same classroom every day, studied together, went out together, or shared student life.
Perhaps adults don't necessarily find it harder to make friends because they've become more reserved or less interested in other people.
Perhaps they simply have fewer opportunities to spend enough time together.
We have contacts. But do we have encounters?
We live in a time when communication is more accessible than ever.
We can talk to someone on the other side of the world. Maintain long-distance friendships. Find people with incredibly specific interests.
Digital opportunities have real value, particularly for those who find face-to-face meetings difficult or struggle to find like-minded people nearby.
But access to communication is not the same as feeling connected.
In 2025, the OECD published Social Connections and Loneliness in OECD Countries, a report examining social relationships and loneliness across different countries.
One important finding shows that, across 21 European OECD countries, daily face-to-face contact with friends and family declined between 2006, 2015, and 2022, while remote contact increased.
At the same time, most respondents in the countries covered by the analysis still reported regular social contact and having people they could rely on.
So we cannot simply conclude that everyone has become lonely or that digital technologies have destroyed friendships.
But we can ask an important question.
If we're communicating more remotely while seeing one another less often in person, what happens to our opportunities to form new relationships?
After all, we can maintain existing friendships through messages and calls.
But new friendships often need a place where they can begin.
Life between work and home
For many adults, an ordinary day looks something like this.
Work. Commuting. Grocery shopping. Family responsibilities. Household chores. Rest.
Then it starts all over again.
Even when we'd like to meet new people, the question is where to fit that encounter into our lives.
Some people work shifts. Some have young children. Others care for family members. Some cannot afford additional activities, while others live in places with limited opportunities for socialising.
That's why reducing the whole issue to the advice, "Just go out and meet someone," isn't particularly helpful.
Going out isn't equally easy for everyone.
And opportunities aren't equally available to everyone.
Still, there's another interesting aspect to this.
At work, we may encounter dozens of people every day without those encounters developing into friendships outside the professional environment.
We talk, collaborate, and solve problems together, but the relationship often remains tied to our professional roles.
Friendship usually requires something more.
The opportunity to get to know someone beyond the task we're working on together.
To have a conversation that doesn't always need a purpose.
To see each other again, even when neither of us has to.
Where have the places we simply spend time in gone?
American sociologist Ray Oldenburg popularised the concept of third places.
The first place is home.
The second is work.
Third places are spaces where people can gather informally, talk, and build relationships outside their family and professional roles.
They might be cafés, libraries, parks, community centres, clubs, or other places that allow people to meet regularly.
Their value doesn't necessarily lie in the activities or programmes they offer.
It lies in the opportunity they create for people to be together.
Of course, not every such place is equally accessible or welcoming to everyone. Cost, location, accessibility, and a sense of belonging can all influence who actually feels comfortable there.
Think about it.
How many places do we have today where we can arrive alone, without a particular reason, and feel that we belong?
Where is it normal to start a conversation with someone we don't know?
Where can we return regularly without having to arrange every visit in advance?
Perhaps the question isn't simply why adults find it harder to make friends.
Perhaps we should be asking whether we're creating enough spaces where friendships have a chance to begin.
Not every acquaintance has to become a friend
There's another side to this story.
Some people don't want to expand their circle of friends.
They're happy with the relationships they already have. They value spending time alone. They don't feel the need to constantly meet new people.
And that's perfectly legitimate.
Being alone is not the same as being lonely.
Likewise, having a large number of acquaintances isn't proof of a fulfilling social life.
Someone can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely.
Someone else might have two close friends and feel deeply connected.
The goal isn't to collect as many contacts as possible.
Nor is it to turn every person we meet into a friend.
But there's a difference between not wanting new relationships and not having the opportunity to build them.
Perhaps that distinction is what matters.
Sometimes we need something else to bring us together
It's interesting how many friendships develop while we're actually focused on something entirely different.
We train together.
We learn a foreign language.
We go hiking.
We try to master a new dance step.
We attend a workshop, volunteer, or join a local initiative.
We didn't necessarily come looking for a friend.
We came for the activity.
And then a conversation happens.
Then another encounter.
Then a coffee together after practice.
And perhaps, over time, something more than an acquaintance develops.
That's what makes shared activities interesting: they give people a reason to spend time together without requiring them to establish an immediate connection.
Of course, attending one workshop isn't a guaranteed recipe for making a new friend.
Nor will everyone who shares an interest necessarily connect.
But regular activities can create something Jeffrey Hall's research identified as an important part of relationship development: time spent together, including shared activities and everyday conversations.
Sometimes a shared interest is exactly what allows two previously separate worlds to meet for the first time.
How many interesting people have we passed by without ever meeting?
Somewhere in our city, there may be a person we'd get along with incredibly well.
We have a similar sense of humour. We're interested in the same things. We could talk for hours.
But we'll never meet.
Not because we're incompatible.
Simply because our paths never cross.
They take a different tram to work.
We spend our weekends in different places.
They're thinking about taking a photography course, while we're considering a hiking trip.
And perhaps we're both waiting for an opportunity to try something new.
These thoughts are not scientific evidence of friendships we've missed. But they offer an interesting perspective.
How much of our social life is shaped by our choices, and how much by the circumstances in which we live?
How many people will we never meet simply because we don't share the same spaces?
And how many relationships never begin because the opportunity for that first conversation never arises?
Perhaps what we're missing isn't people, but opportunities to meet them
When we talk about loneliness, we often treat it as a personal problem.
Something an individual should solve by becoming more outgoing, sociable, or active.
But social connection isn't only a matter of personality.
It also depends on time, space, access to activities, life circumstances, and the communities we're part of.
Not everyone needs a new best friend.
But perhaps more people would like to have a place they can visit alone and still feel welcome.
A place where they don't have to know anyone beforehand.
A place where a conversation can begin without any particular reason.
Maybe it's a sports club.
Maybe a creative workshop.
Maybe a library, a neighbourhood event, or a trip we've decided to join even though we don't have anyone to go with.
We can't know in advance whether a friendship will develop there.
But we can create opportunities for people to meet.
And perhaps that's what we sometimes miss most in adulthood.
Not another way to stay in touch with people we already know. But more opportunities to meet the people we don't know yet.