Friends and loneliness
Why do I feel lonely even though I have friends?
At the birthday dinner you laughed in all the right places and still felt you weren’t there. Where that comes from, and what helps.
How many friends does the average person have?
Tool, 3 minutes
Most adults have 3 to 5 people they would call in a real crisis, and around 15 they keep up with closely. Wider rings of about 50 and 150 sit around those. Draw your own rings below and see how they compare.
- Met up this month
- One mark per person in rings 3 and 4
- Empty places up to the usual number
Your closest people
Nothing leaves this device.
Type a name or initials, up to 12 letters, or leave the box empty and press Add.
That ring is full in the drawing.
That ring is full in the drawing.
The wider circles
A rough count is fine.
This month
Which of them have you met up with since the start of the month? Pick them.
Add someone to ring 1 or 2 first.
What the four rings are
When researchers count the people in someone’s life, the same layers keep turning up. A tiny inner group of 3 to 5 people you would turn to when things fall apart. Around them, about 15 people you have a special tie with and usually hear from at least once a month.1 Further out come about 50 good friends and about 150 people you know by name and history.2
Each ring is roughly three times the size of the one inside it. The numbers add up as you go out, so “15” means your 5 closest plus about 10 more.
The famous 150 is much shakier than it sounds
The 150 came from comparing brain size and group size in apes and monkeys. When a team in Stockholm re-ran that kind of calculation with newer data and methods, the answer for humans could be anything from about 2 to over 500 people.3 Phone records do show rings, but the middle ones vary a lot from person to person.4 Treat the rings as a rough picture of how closeness thins out, and don’t treat any number as a target.
So how many friends does the average person have?
Close to half of American adults said in 2021 that they had three close friends or fewer. That came from a survey of about 2,000 people, and about 1 in 8 said they had none at all. In 1990 only about 1 in 33 said so.5
So if you count three close friends or fewer, about half of adults would say the same. What tends to make a difference is how often you actually see the people in your first two rings.
Why seeing people keeps them close
One study followed students for 18 months as they left home for university. Friends they saw less often slipped outward in closeness. Family held on far better, even with little contact. Friendship seems to need regular time together in a way family does not, so a name in ring 2 you haven’t seen in half a year may already be drifting out toward ring 3, further from the middle.6
How long does it take to make a friend?
Longer than most people expect. In Jeffrey Hall’s studies, it took about 50 hours together before someone felt like a casual friend. Calling them a real friend took about 90 hours in all, and a close friend took over 200. Time spent hanging out counted for more than time spent working side by side.7
You may have seen the “11-6-3 rule” online: 11 meetings of 3 hours over 6 months. The posts that pass it around don’t point to any study. Eleven meetings of 3 hours make 33 hours, which in Hall’s numbers is not yet a casual friend. A close friend takes many more evenings than that.
Published 23 October 2026.
Sources (7)
- Zhou, W.-X., Sornette, D., Hill, R. A., and Dunbar, R. I. M. (2005). Discrete hierarchical organization of social group sizes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 272, 439-444. People’s networks fall into layers of about 3-5, 9-15 and 30-45; the second layer is usually in touch at least monthly. Read the study Back to the text
- Dunbar, R. I. M. (2018). The anatomy of friendship. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(1), 32-51. An overview of the layers: roughly 5 people, then 15, then 50, then 150. Read the study Back to the text
- Lindenfors, P., Wartel, A., and Lind, J. (2021). “Dunbar’s number” deconstructed. Biology Letters, 17, 20210158. Average estimates of 16-109 people, with ranges from 2-520. Read the study Back to the text
- Mac Carron, P., Kaski, K., and Dunbar, R. (2016). Calling Dunbar’s numbers. Social Networks, 47, 151-155. Call patterns show layers; the innermost and outermost match earlier studies, the middle ones vary widely. arxiv.org Back to the text
- Cox, D. A. (2021). The state of American friendship: change, challenges, and loss. Survey Center on American Life. 2,019 US adults in May 2021; 49 percent had three or fewer close friends, 12 percent none, against 3 percent in 1990. www.americansurveycenter.org Back to the text
- Roberts, S. G. B., and Dunbar, R. I. M. (2011). The costs of family and friends: an 18-month longitudinal study of relationship maintenance and decay. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32(3), 186-197. Friendships cooled when contact dropped; family ties much less. Read the study Back to the text
- Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278-1296. Adults who had just moved, and new students; about 50, 90 and over 200 hours in total for each step. Read the study Back to the text
What changed in your life when one of your circles got smaller?
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