--- title: "How to make friends online as an adult: where to look, what to say first, and how to stay safe" description: "To make friends online as an adult, pick one place built around something you already do, keep showing up, and write to one person about something specific they said. Expect it to take months: a University of Kansas study of time spent together put a casual friendship at about 50 hours. Keep money and personal details out of it until you know them." url: https://kindredly.io/guides/how-to-make-friends-online language: en updated: 2026-11-10 --- # How to make friends online as an adult: where to look, what to say first, and how to stay safe *Where adults actually find friends on the internet, a first message that is easy to answer, how long it really takes, and the few rules that keep it safe.* By Mark, founder of Kindredly · Nov 10, 2026 · 9 min read It is eleven at night. You just read something funny and looked up to tell someone, and there was no one in the room and no name in your phone that fit. The friends from work went home. The friends from school moved. After school ends, friends stop arriving on their own, and nobody tells you. You can make new ones online. It works the way it works anywhere else: go to one place where people talk about something you already care about, keep going back, and write to one person about something specific they said. Give it time, more time than feels reasonable, and keep money and your address out of it until you know them. The rest of this guide is the detail. You are not unusual for needing this. The CDC puts the share of U.S. adults who say they feel lonely at about one in three, and in a 2023 Pew Research Center survey 8% of American adults said they had no close friends at all. > A guide to finding friends is not a crisis service. If loneliness has become heavy enough that getting through the day is hard, or you are thinking about hurting yourself, please reach out now: in the US, call or text **988** (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). Anywhere else, call your local emergency number, or find a free, confidential line near you at [findahelpline.com](https://findahelpline.com). ![Wren carrying a stamped letter along a dotted line between two frosted windows](https://kindredly.io/guides/art/how-to-make-friends-online-hero.webp) ## Where to make friends online There are five kinds of places, and they suit different people. - **A community around something you do.** A subreddit, a Discord server, a forum for a game, a craft, a show, a city. This is the easiest start if you never know what to say, because the subject does the talking for you. - **Friendship apps.** Apps that work like dating apps but are meant for friends: a profile, some photos, a match. They are fast. They are also a contest of first impressions, which is hard on people who are better in the tenth conversation than in the first. - **Games.** Playing alongside the same people every week is time spent together, and time together is most of what a friendship is made of. - **Language exchange.** You teach yours, they teach theirs. It comes with a reason to talk every week, which most new friendships lack. - **Letters.** Pen pals, by post or in an app. The slowest route, and the one that suits people who say more in writing than they ever do out loud. Our guide to [how to find a pen pal](https://kindredly.io/guides/how-to-find-a-penpal) covers it. Pick the one you would visit anyway, and pick only one. A month in one place beats a week in five, because you become familiar by being the name people keep seeing. ## What to say first A first message usually fails for one reason: it gives the other person nothing to answer. "Hey" asks them to do all the work. "We should be friends" asks them to decide something about a stranger. A first message that is easy to answer has three parts: 1. **Something specific they said.** Proof that you read it. 2. **One thing of yours.** So it is a conversation and not an interview. 3. **One question.** Easy to answer, and impossible to answer with yes. ![A sheet of paper with three short blocks of writing in three colours, the last one ending in a dot like a question, and Wren reading it](https://kindredly.io/guides/art/how-to-make-friends-online-first-message.webp) Put together, it looks like this: > You said the second season lost you at the wedding episode. Same. I kept watching out of spite. Which episode would you tell someone to stop at? > Your photo of the bread that didn't rise made me feel better about mine. I've killed two starters this year. What flour are you using? > I saw you're learning Portuguese because of one song. Mine was a film. What was the song? Then comes the part that is easy to skip: when they answer, answer back. If you are holding off because you think the first exchange went badly, a 2018 study in *Psychological Science* is worth knowing. Its authors found what they called a liking gap: after talking with someone new, people tended to guess that the other person liked them less than that person really did. Your read of how it went is probably harsher than theirs. Send the second message. ## How long it takes Longer than you think, and there is a number for it. Jeffrey Hall, a communication researcher at the University of Kansas, estimated in 2018 that it takes roughly 50 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 to become a friend, and more than 200 to become a close one. Hours of hanging out counted. Hours spent working together did not count for as much. ![Three stacks of letters, each taller than the last, under three windows that go from frosted to nearly clear](https://kindredly.io/guides/art/how-to-make-friends-online-hours.webp) The study counted hours people spent together, and the university's account of it says nothing about messages or time online. Nobody has worked out the exchange rate for a group chat. So take the numbers as a sense of scale: a friendship is made of hours, so plan for hours. - **Make it a standing thing.** The same game on the same evening. A letter every Sunday. A voice call while you both cook. - **Do something together, not just talk.** Watch the same film and message through it. Read the same book. Play. - **Don't count the first month.** Fifty hours at two hours a week is half a year. Slow is the normal speed. Hall's own conclusion was plain: nobody can be made to give you their time, so the move that is yours to make is the invitation. ## From chatting to actually being friends Small talk keeps a conversation going. What tends to bring two people closer is taking turns telling each other slightly more than last time. Psychologists call it reciprocal self-disclosure, and it is the idea behind the 36 questions from Arthur Aron's 1997 study: strangers who took turns answering questions that grew more personal, each revealing a little more so that neither got ahead of the other, came away feeling closer than pairs who kept to small talk. In practice: - **Match them, then go one step further.** If they mention a bad week, say a true thing about yours. - **Remember, and come back to it.** "How did the interview go?" does more than any compliment. - **Ask a real question now and then.** Our list of [questions to ask a pen pal](https://kindredly.io/guides/questions-to-ask-a-penpal) works for any new friend. - **Don't unload everything on day two.** A little more each time, in turns. That is the whole trick. ## How to stay safe The part worth learning is the script that scammers follow. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission describes it for romance scams. Its page is not about friendships, but nothing in the script needs romance, so we would use it as a checklist for any new person online. - **Never send money.** The FTC's rule is blunt: "Never send money or gifts to a sweetheart you haven't met in person." Apply it to friends too. The FTC lists wire transfers, gift cards, payment apps and cryptocurrency as the ways scammers ask to be paid. - **Know the signs the FTC names.** Soon after meeting, they want to leave the app or site for a private channel. They can never meet in person. There is an emergency, a fee, a ticket. They offer to help you invest in cryptocurrency. - **Check the photos.** The FTC suggests a reverse image search, which shows whether that face also appears under other names. The rest is ordinary care, and it is our advice, not the FTC's: - **Keep your details until you know them.** Your full name, your address, your workplace, and anything that shows where you are right now. - **Meet in public the first time.** Tell someone where you are going, and arrange your own way home. - **Leave when it feels wrong.** Block, report, and don't explain. There is more in our guide to [writing to strangers safely](https://kindredly.io/guides/writing-to-strangers-safely). ## If you are better in writing than in chat Some people are bad at profiles and slow in group chats, and good on paper. If that is you, the letters route deserves a real try. [Kindredly](https://kindredly.io/make-friends) is built for it. You write a letter to nobody in particular, and it lands first on the desks of strangers who write the way you do, matched by the rhythm and shape of your writing and not by photos or a profile. There is no profile to fill in. A stranger sees a name the app gives you, your letters and, unless you switch it off, your star sign. Not your own name, not a photo, not your city. ![Wren flies a letter from an envelope across to a stranger's frosted window, then carries a reply back](https://kindredly.io/guides/art/letter-travels-loop.svg) On the free plan, fifteen letters from strangers reach your desk each day and you can start five new ones of your own. From the fifth letter each way, either of you can enclose your name, and names are shown only when you both have. A safety check reads letters before they go out to strangers, and it stops attempts to swap contact details or money, so the getting-to-know-you part happens in the letters. It is for adults only, and it runs on iPhone and on the web. If you don't know how to begin, [your first letter to a pen pal](https://kindredly.io/guides/first-letter-to-a-penpal) has twelve ways to start. ## Questions people ask ### Is it weird to make friends online as an adult? No. Wanting more friends as an adult is ordinary: in Pew Research Center's 2023 survey, 61% of U.S. adults said close friends are extremely or very important for a fulfilling life, and 8% said they have none. Those figures are about friendship in general, not about meeting people online. Adults lose the places where friends used to appear on their own, such as school, a first job or a shared flat, so looking on purpose is what is left, and online is one place to look. ### What is the best app to make friends online? There isn't one best app, because the kinds differ more than the brands. Interest communities suit people who need a subject, friendship apps suit people who are good at first impressions, games and language exchange give you a reason to return every week, and letters suit people who are better in writing. Choose the kind first, then a well-run place of that kind. ### How do I make friends online if I'm shy? Choose places where you can take your time: forums, comment threads and letters, not live voice rooms. Start by replying to one person about one specific thing. And remember the liking gap: in the 2018 study, people tended to think their conversation partner liked them less than the partner really did. ### How long does it take to make a friend online? Nobody has measured it for friendships that start online. The nearest figure is from Jeffrey Hall's 2018 study of time spent together: roughly 50 hours to become casual friends and more than 200 to become close. As a sense of scale, expect months of regular contact, not one great conversation. ### Is it safe to meet an online friend in person? It can be, if you take the ordinary precautions. Talk on a call first, meet somewhere public, tell someone where you will be, and arrange your own way home. If they have ever asked you for money, don't go. ## Sources - University of Kansas: [How to make friends? Study reveals how many hours it takes](https://news.ku.edu/news/article/2018/03/06/study-reveals-number-hours-it-takes-make-friend) - University of Essex Research Repository: [The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?](https://repository.essex.ac.uk/23025/) - Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley: [36 Questions for Increasing Closeness](https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/36_questions_for_increasing_closeness) - Pew Research Center: [What does friendship look like in America?](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/12/what-does-friendship-look-like-in-america/) - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: [Health Effects of Social Isolation and Loneliness](https://www.cdc.gov/social-connectedness/risk-factors/index.html) - Federal Trade Commission: [What To Know About Romance Scams](https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-know-about-romance-scams) --- **about the author** · Mark made Kindredly because the internet got loud, and he missed getting a letter from someone who simply wrote back. He writes these guides for anyone looking for a person to write to, whether or not they ever use the app. https://kindredly.io/guides#about --- Kindredly is an anonymous penpal app that matches strangers by how they write. Kindredly · https://kindredly.io/