How Long Does It Take to Make a Friend? The 50/90/200-Hour Math

Short answer: according to research by communication professor Jeffrey Hall, it takes roughly 50 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend, around 90 hours to become a real friend, and more than 200 hours to become a close friend. The kind of time matters too: relaxed, social time counts for more than hours spent working side by side. In calendar terms, two hours a week with the same person gets you to casual friendship in about six months. This article explains where those numbers come from, how to turn them into a realistic schedule, and how many friends people actually need.

Where the 50, 90 and 200 hours come from

The figures come from a 2018 paper by Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. According to the University of Kansas news release on the study, Hall combined two studies:

• Study 1: 355 adults who had moved to a new place within the previous six months and were looking for new friends. They described a person they had met since moving and estimated how much time they had spent together.
• Study 2: 112 first-year students at the University of Kansas who had recently moved to Lawrence. They reported on two people they had met in the first weeks of school and were followed up at four and seven weeks.

Putting the results together, Hall estimated these thresholds:

Hall’s own summary of the takeaway was blunt: “You can’t snap your fingers and make a friend.”

What kind of time counts

The study did not treat all hours equally. Time spent hanging out, joking around, playing games or simply talking was associated with closer friendship. Hours spent together at work counted for less; colleagues could spend a lot of time near each other without becoming friends. That fits everyday experience: you may sit next to someone for a year and know little about them, while a few long dinners with someone else make you feel close.

How much to trust the numbers

These are useful estimates, not a law of nature. They are based on people’s own recollections of time spent together, which are approximate, and they describe averages across many people. Some friendships click faster; others never get there regardless of hours. The study also cannot tell us whether time causes closeness or whether people who like each other simply choose to spend more time together. Most likely, both are true.

Still, the broad message is consistent with common sense and with the advice of public health bodies: friendship is built through repeated time together, and there is no shortcut around that.

Turn hours into a calendar

Hours are abstract. Weeks are not. The table below converts Hall’s thresholds into how long it would take at different weekly rhythms, assuming you spend that time with the same person or small group.

Three practical lessons fall out of this simple math:

1. Consistency beats intensity. A weekly two-hour activity adds up to more than an occasional big night out. Missing a few weeks resets more than you think.
2. Adding a hangout roughly halves the time. The biggest jump comes from going from “we see each other at the thing” to “we also see each other outside the thing.”
3. Group time counts, but less directly. Two hours on a team of ten is shared time, but you get fewer minutes of real conversation with each person. Smaller groups, or splitting off for a meal afterward, speed things up.

This is why we recommend pairing a recurring activity with follow-up. Our pillar guide on how to make friends as an adult turns this into a four-week plan, and our list of 25 places to meet new people ranks options by how much repeat contact they give you.

Why it feels slower as an adult

If friendships seemed to happen effortlessly in school or college, the hours explain why. Students spend many hours a week near the same people, much of it unstructured: classes, shared housing, meals, clubs and late nights. The 50-hour mark could pass in a few weeks without anyone planning it.

Adult life rarely supplies that. Work time counts for less, commutes and caregiving eat into evenings, and remote work removes even casual contact. The same friendship that once took a semester can now take most of a year, unless you deliberately create the hours. That is not a sign that something is wrong with you; it is a scheduling problem, and scheduling problems can be solved.

How many friends do you need?

There is no magic number, but research gives some useful reference points.

What Americans report

In a 2023 Pew Research Center survey of more than 5,000 U.S. adults, 53% said they had one to four close friends, 38% said five or more, and 8% said none. Among people with at least one close friend, those with five or more close friends were more likely to say they were completely or very satisfied with their friendships (81%) than those with one to four (65%).

Dunbar’s layers

Oxford anthropologist Robin Dunbar is known for the idea that people can maintain only a limited number of meaningful relationships, often summarized as about 150. His research, reviewed in “The Anatomy of Friendship” (Trends in Cognitive Sciences), describes social networks as layered: a small inner circle of very close relationships, surrounded by progressively larger and less intimate circles, commonly described as roughly 5, 15, 50 and 150 people. Dunbar’s work also stresses that friendships are costly to maintain, mostly in time, which is why the inner circles are small.

These numbers are averages and approximations, not targets. Plenty of people are happy with two close friends; others thrive with more. The useful insight is structural: you only need a few people in the innermost circle, but each of them needs a lot of time.

A practical target

For most adults trying to rebuild a social life, a reasonable goal is three to five people you see regularly, plus a wider circle of friendly acquaintances. Given the hours involved, that is a project measured in months, so it helps to work on several connections in parallel through a shared activity.

Weekly steps to speed things up

You cannot skip the hours, but you can make them easier to collect and make each one count more.

1. Anchor one recurring activity. Pick something weekly with a stable group: a league, a class, a volunteer shift, a trivia team. This is your base of hours.
2. Add the edges. Arrive ten minutes early and suggest food or a drink afterward. Those extra 30 to 60 minutes of unstructured time are the most valuable hours of the week.
3. Do one outside plan every two weeks. Invite one or two people to something specific: lunch on Saturday, a walk on Sunday morning, a game at someone’s place. This is the step that roughly halves the timeline.
4. Prefer longer, relaxed time. One three-hour afternoon builds more closeness than three rushed coffees, because conversation has room to go beyond small talk.
5. Keep in touch between meetings. A short message, a shared joke or a photo keeps the connection warm until the next meeting.
6. Protect the routine. Treat your recurring activity like an appointment. The weeks you skip are the ones that slow everything down.

Worked example: Sam’s first six months

Sam is a fictional example. She is 33, moved to a new suburb with her partner, works remotely and knows almost nobody locally.

• Weeks 1–4: Sam joins a Wednesday evening beginners’ volleyball league. Games last about an hour and a half, and she starts staying for drinks afterward, adding about an hour. That is roughly 2.5 hours a week with the same eight teammates.
• From week 5: she notices she clicks with two teammates, Ellie and Rob. Every other weekend, she invites them to something: a brunch, a farmers market, a hike. Each outing adds about three hours with them. Her weekly average with Ellie and Rob rises to around four hours.
• Around week 14: by Hall’s estimate, Sam has passed the 50-hour mark with Ellie and Rob. They text without a reason and start inviting her to things.
• Around week 24: she is near 90 hours with Ellie. They are, in every practical sense, friends. Close friendship will take longer, but the routine is doing the work.

The numbers in this example are illustrative, but the pattern is the point: one anchor activity, the extra hour around it, and regular outside plans.

What makes each hour count more

Hours are the raw material, but what happens during them matters. A few habits tend to make time together feel closer, faster:

• Go a little beyond small talk. Share something real but not heavy: why you moved, what you are excited about, a small worry about work. Closeness grows when both people gradually share more.
• Be curious and remember details. Asking a follow-up question about something someone told you last week shows you were listening, and it is one of the fastest ways to make someone feel known.
• Match the other person’s pace. If they open up a little, you open up a little. Friendship tends to build in small, reciprocal steps rather than big confessions.
• Do things, not just talk. Shared experiences such as a hike, a cooking attempt that goes wrong or a tense final trivia round give you stories in common, and stories are what friendships are made of.
• Show up when it is inconvenient. Helping someone move, visiting when they are sick or celebrating a small win signals that the relationship matters to you.

Signs a friendship is moving forward

Because the hours are hard to count precisely, it helps to watch for signals instead:

• They start inviting you, not just accepting your invitations.
• You text about things that have nothing to do with the activity where you met.
• Conversations move from what you do to how you feel about it.
• You can sit in comfortable silence or cancel a plan without it feeling like a big deal.
• They introduce you to other friends or invite you to something with their group.

If you notice several of these, you are probably past the casual-friend stage, whatever the hour count says.

If the wait feels too long

Knowing that friendship takes months can feel discouraging when you are lonely now. Two things help. First, the benefits start before the friendship is “finished”: regular contact with friendly acquaintances improves day-to-day life long before anyone becomes a best friend. Second, you can work on several connections at once, so progress does not depend on one person. If loneliness is weighing on you, our guide on how to cope with loneliness has small steps for the meantime. If you are struggling to cope, please reach out to a health professional; in the United States and Canada you can call or text 988 at any hour.

Staying safe while you build new friendships

When you start meeting new people outside a group setting, keep the first few meetings in public places, tell a friend where you are going, arrange your own way home, and leave if you feel uncomfortable.

MeetNow, the app we are building, is designed around that third step of making a plan: a host posts a plan at a public place with the date, time, seats and who pays, and picks who joins. It is live on the web at app.trymeetnow.com and on Android through Google Play, starting in Malta; the iPhone app is not in the App Store yet. Read more on our MeetNow app page.

Want to turn this into an actual plan? MeetNow is a free app for meeting people in person: a host posts a plan at a public place, says who pays (host pays, split, pay your own or free) and picks who joins. It is live on the web and works in your browser, starting in Malta. The Android app is on Google Play; the iPhone app is not in the App Store yet. Open MeetNow and see the plans posted in Malta.

FAQ: how long it takes to make a friend

How many hours does it take to make a friend?

Jeffrey Hall’s 2018 study estimated about 50 hours to go from acquaintance to casual friend, around 90 hours to become a friend and more than 200 hours to become a close friend. These are averages from survey data, so individual friendships can be faster or slower.

How long does it take to make a close friend?

By Hall’s estimate, more than 200 hours together. At two hours a week that would be about two years; at five hours a week, about nine months. Adding regular hangouts outside a shared activity shortens the timeline considerably.

Does time at work count toward friendship?

Less than social time. In Hall’s research, hours spent working together were less strongly linked to friendship than time spent hanging out, joking or doing leisure activities together. Lunches and after-work plans count more than desk time.

How many close friends does the average American have?

In Pew Research Center’s 2023 survey, 53% of U.S. adults said they had one to four close friends, 38% said five or more and 8% said they had none.

Why is it so hard to make friends as an adult?

Mostly because adult life removes the repeated, unstructured time that school provided. Work time counts for less, and commutes, caregiving and remote work leave fewer hours for socializing. Creating a weekly routine with the same people solves much of the problem.