Hall surveyed 112 college students every three weeks during their first nine weeks at a Midwestern university. He also gave a one-time questionnaire to 355 American adults who had moved to a new city in the past six months. In these surveys, the newcomers picked a friend or two and reported how much time they spend together, what activities they do, and how close the friendship is (how emotionally close and committed they feel, and how much they admire their friend’s unique traits).
- It takes students 43 hours and adults 94 hours to turn acquaintances into casual friends.
- Students need 57 hours to transition from casual friends to friends. Adults need, on average, 164 hours.
- For students, friends became good or best friends after about 119 hours. Adults need an additional 100 hours to make that happen.
Why does it take adults so much more time to make friends than students? Hall speculates that there might be something about student life that facilitates friendship—perhaps the close quarters of college living fosters fast connections. It could also be that college students overestimate how deep their friendships are.
But time on its own does not breed intimacy. It depends how we spend that time, as Hall found when he analyzed what activities friends did together.
In other words, much as we might wish for one, there may be no set formula for making a friend.
Ultimately, this research underscores that friendship is an investment. Time spent with one potential comrade is time you can’t spend with another, and those hours matter. For students who were able to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend or a friend into a good friend during the study, they (on average) doubled their number of hours in that person’s company. Meanwhile, they spent half as much time with other friends, and those friendships didn’t evolve.
“You have to work on the ones that count,” says Hall. “Time spent together, especially leisure time, can be thought of as an investment toward future returns on [satisfying our need for belonging].”
That investment can take months, as I saw firsthand after moving. As Hall points out, friendship isn’t a one-sided endeavor. Some connections will peter out, while others will flourish—and it’s not always in our control.
Friends Read Free