The Amount of Time it Takes to Make a Friend
50 hours.
90 hours.
200 hours.
Those are the amounts of time you need to spend with a person you like. (Big caveat because not everyone you see and spend time with on a regular basis will move into the friendship zone. There are plenty of people you spend time with daily that you don’t want for a relationship.)
In addition, according to a recent study, “We usually are closest to no more than 5 people, call about 15 people good friends, and about 50 people friends.”
So close people on the best friend level = 5.
Good friends that would — without question — get an invite to any party you’re throwing = 15.
People that you’d invite to dinner or to see a movie and describe as your friend = 50.
According to the same study, you need 50 hours to move someone from acquaintance level to friendship level. “He found that it took about 50 hours of interaction to move from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 hours to move from casual friend to friend, and more than 200 hours to qualify as a best friend.” Those hours were over a 9 week period.
But it wasn’t just time because there were people who spent 8 hours per day together at a job, which would be over 300 hours in that same time period. The study also found that “how people spent their time and what they talked about affected how close they became.”
I guess the thing I’m curious about is how long patches of time impact a friendship, which isn’t really addressed in the study. What about people who spend 200 hours together, but over the course of a year? Or people who consistently spend 20 hours per 9 week period — so a small amount — but they do it year after year after year?
And is it different once you hit true adulthood? This psychologist was studying college freshman along with adults who had relocated to a new area. In one case, you’re in the prime friendship-making zone of your life; it is so easy to meet new people during college if you put yourself out there a little bit. And relocating also is a time of life when you’re going to push yourself out of your comfort zone and try to meet new people. But what about the rest of us who are adults, going about our daily lives?
I am fascinated by friendship studies. How about you?
11 comments
Mhm, didn’t you write recently that Josh was your best friend? I guess I am more of a family person. And I have exactly 1 best friend, who is also the best friend of my partner and godparent to our daughter. So almost counts as family too. Difficult way to say that friendship studies make me feel almost friendless.
These studies definitely make me feel like I don’t have many friends. Besides my husband, I don’t think I have a best friend, and I know that the people who are my closest friends have other friends they are much closer to than me. There are plenty of people at work I sit and have lunch with (while at work), but that I would never call to get together with outside of work, and I would rarely speak to any of them about what is really going on in my life. I have old college friends that I would be thrilled to meet up with, and who would probably be happy to see me, but we don’t talk to each other much at all in the mean time. I don’t know. My friends don’t seem to fall into these neat categories, and I am always aware of the discrepancy in how important someone is to me, than I am to them (I consider them a closer friend than they consider me). Friendship is an arena I still really struggle with. It’s hard.
Fascinating! I am definitely interested in friendship studies. As a Sociology major in college, I am interested in all studies involving people and their social ties (friendship, family, work, community, etc.). After going through infertility and experiencing its major impact on friendship, I am even more interested. I am about to move out of state and, as an adult, I don’t expect to make any friends for a long time. I hope to make acquaintances within the first year by finding an activity or two. I hope to be friendly with the people at my clinical rotations and I want to get involved in my profession’s organization at the state level. But I’m glad I have a lot of books and art supplies because I think it will be quite a while before I have bonafide friends. I think it will take a couple of years at least.
These numbers seem really high – both in terms of numbers of friends and the amount of time someone other than a college freshman can spend making friends.
Five “best friends”? I don’t they understand what “best friend” means…
These numbers seem really high – both in terms of numbers of friends and the amount of time someone other than a college freshman can spend making friends.
Five “best friends”? I don’t think they understand what “best friend” means…
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Went and looked at the linked article and the 5/15/50 numbers are more the limits of the number of relationships we can handle cognitively, not how many friends people have on average: “…there are layers of friendship — e.g., acquaintances, casual friends, friends, and good friends — and that there are cognitive limits to the number of people that we can accommodate in any one layer. Those limits have a mathematical elegance. We usually are closest to no more than five people, call about 15 people good friends, and about 50 people friends. Famously, Dunbar found that 150 is a rough limit on the number of meaningful relationships our brains seem able to manage.”
I’m already tired just reading that. And what counts as “interaction”? Face-to-face or any form of communication? Because as the study points out, there are people I’ve had to work with that have made me want to curl up into a small ball, meaning I keep interactions to a minimum despite being physically close to them.
Fascinating though.
I’m fascinated, and skeptical at the same time. Sure, we may as human beings be able to do this, but a voice in my head keeps going back to what my therapist said many, many years ago “….a person is really lucky if they find 5 people in their LIFETIME that they can trust.” I don’t actually disagree with that, and well, I don’t want to be close to anyone I can’t trust so…suffice to say the people I’d actually label as friends? Much smaller circle. LOL
Sociological studies don’t interest me, because I am often outside the norm and react like”WHAT? NO! THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!!!”
I’m definitely closer to people I see regularly, because in most cases it takes me a while to warm up to people. But there are a few people with whom there is so much shared history we are friends no questions asked. Still, if I don’t see or interact much I wouldn’t call them a “best friend”….but I’ll always be there for them and vice versa.
I do find these kinds of studies interesting, but like others, make me feel somewhat abnormal for not having that many close friends. Also those numbers of hours sound impossible to achieve (hmmm. I think I just realized why I don’t have that many close friends…)
I’m thinking of online friendships. Do the hours reading each other’s writings count as hours? Or is it only the in-person hours?
Because I’ve fallen into friendship with only 1 hour of actual face time. Over tea.