How to Make New Friends

Why it is harder to get friends as an adult

If you are searching for how to get friends as an adult, you are not doing anything wrong. School, university and a first job hand you three things for free: the same people every day, no plan required, and hours of unstructured time together. Sociologists have pointed to exactly those three conditions - proximity, repetition and unplanned interaction - as the raw material friendship is made from.

Adult life quietly removes all of them. You move city. Colleagues go home at five. Everyone has a partner, a commute, a gym slot, a sleep schedule. Nobody is around by default any more, so friendships stop happening by accident.

The fix is not to become more outgoing. It is to rebuild those conditions on purpose: pick a place where the same people show up repeatedly, lead with something you share, and keep turning up. Everything below is a version of that idea.

How do you make friends? Start with something in common

Most social apps are built around discovering people. They show you profiles, photos, bios, followers, mutuals, or whoever happens to be nearby. None of that tells you whether two people will actually enjoy each other's company.

You have heard that opposites attract. When it comes to making friends, research generally finds the reverse. People form friendships with people who share something with them - interests, attitudes, values, routines, activities, or simply the same corner of the internet.

That does not mean your best friend has to be a copy of you. It means similarity gives two strangers the one thing they are missing at the start: a reason to talk.

Imagine meeting two people. One likes completely different things, prefers a completely different way of talking, is online at completely different hours, and wants something very different from a friendship. The other loves three of the same hobbies you do, enjoys the same kind of conversation, and is usually around when you are. You already know which conversation is easier to start.

Shared interests create topics. Shared activities create opportunities. Shared expectations reduce misunderstandings. Shared schedules make it possible to actually spend time together. That is why the first step in how to make a friend is not confidence. It is finding overlap.

How to become friends with someone: the introduction is only the start

Research into friendship formation shows that similarity matters less once people actually know each other. At that point, what happens between the two of you starts to matter far more.

Do you talk regularly? Do both people make an effort? Do conversations get more personal? Do you enjoy the time you spend together? Do you trust each other? Do you keep coming back?

Friendship is something people build. Studies of friendship development find that time spent together and shared activities are strongly connected with growing closeness. One widely cited estimate puts it at roughly fifty hours of contact to move from acquaintance to casual friend, and well over a hundred to become close. Self-disclosure matters too: you become friends with someone when you both move past small talk and start sharing opinions, worries, jokes and ambitions - the parts of yourself you do not hand to everybody.

Look for meaningful shared interests

Having something in common gives a friendship somewhere to begin, but not every shared interest is equally useful. Two people both saying they enjoy music tells you something. Two people discovering they love the same obscure genre, artist, game, hobby, sport, creator or community tells you considerably more.

Specific interests create that immediate “wait, you like that too?” moment. Those moments matter because they make conversation feel natural instead of forced, which is most of what people mean when they ask how to make a friend without it feeling awkward.

Equally: do not write someone off because they have interests you do not share. If someone shares your three favourite hobbies and also enjoys ten other things, those extra ten do not make them a worse match. They may be the things you discover later.

Get friends who want the same kind of friendship

This is the most overlooked part of making friends online. Two people can have identical hobbies and still be a terrible match, because one wants someone to message throughout the day while the other prefers talking once every few days. One wants deep conversations; the other mostly wants memes and gaming. One wants spontaneous plans; the other wants quiet evenings.

Neither person is doing anything wrong. They simply want different friendships. So before you get close to someone, it helps to know what you are actually looking for:

• A close long-term friendship
• Someone to casually chat with
• A gaming friend
• An activity partner
• A study or work friend
• Someone for deep conversations
• Someone to voice chat with
• Someone to hang out with locally
• A low-maintenance friendship

Knowing what you want makes it much easier to recognise someone who wants the same thing - and to say so early, before mismatched expectations turn into hurt feelings.

Communication style matters

One person loves talking for hours. Another disappears for three days and comes back as if nothing happened. Some people love voice calls; some strongly prefer text. Some communicate in jokes and banter; others prefer thoughtful conversation. Some want constant contact; others are perfectly happy with a friendship where nobody needs daily reassurance.

These differences sound small and they become some of the biggest sources of friction over time. Someone who enjoys frequent conversation can read a low-maintenance friend as uninterested. The low-maintenance person can feel buried by constant messages.

Compatibility here is not about one style being better. It is about whether your two styles work together.

Make sure your lives actually overlap

You can meet someone who looks perfect on paper and still never become friends, simply because you are never around at the same time. That matters even more when you make friends online.

Country alone does not decide it. Two people thousands of kilometres apart may be online together every evening, while two people in the same city keep completely opposite schedules. Mornings, evenings, late nights, weekdays, weekends - if two people regularly have the chance to talk, play, watch something or just hang out, the friendship has room to grow.

Friendship needs interaction. Compatibility without opportunity rarely gets very far.

Look for compatible values, not identical personalities

You do not need someone who behaves exactly like you, and there is no strong reason to match people purely because their personalities are near-identical. Values and expectations tend to matter more. Do you value loyalty? Humour? Open-mindedness? Reliability? Curiosity? Directness? Being supportive?

Ask yourself two different questions: what am I like? and what do I appreciate in another person? Someone quiet may love having a talkative friend. Someone adventurous may appreciate a reliable friend who keeps them grounded. Good compatibility does not always mean being the same. Sometimes it means your qualities work well together.

What about zodiac signs?

Zodiac signs can be fun. Discovering you are both Scorpios is a perfectly good icebreaker, a joke, something interesting to put on a profile. But there is no convincing evidence that zodiac compatibility should decide whether two people become good friends - and the same goes for favourite colours.

Fun profile details should stay fun. They should not quietly decide who you are allowed to meet.

Reciprocity might be the most important part

Friend matching is a harder problem than recommending a song. Spotify only has to work out “will this person like this track?” A friendship platform has to answer “will these two people like each other?”

Imagine someone who looks almost perfect for you - their interests, their profile, the way they talk, how they spend their time. But from their side, you are not what they are looking for at all. That is not a good match, however high it scores in one direction.

Strong friendships need interest and effort from both people. You should not constantly have to chase someone for replies, attention, plans or basic effort. People do communicate differently, but a lasting friendship should still feel reciprocal. Both people choose it.

How to make a friend online, step by step

Everything above is about choosing well. This is the part people actually get stuck on: you have found someone promising, and now what? Here is how to make new friends online in practice, in the order it tends to work.

1. Pick a place with context. A pure random chat pairs you with anyone and hopes for the best. You will make friends faster somewhere that already knows what you are into, because the first message writes itself.
2. Fill in a profile that says something. Interests, the kind of friend you want, when you are usually around, the languages you speak. A blank profile gives the other person nothing to reply to.
3. Open with the overlap, not “hey.” “You put Hollow Knight in your interests - did you ever finish the Path of Pain?” gets an answer. “hi” gets a “hi.”
4. Ask one real question in every reply. Conversations die when both people only react. A specific question about something they said keeps it moving and shows you were listening.
5. Suggest doing something together early. A game, a call, a film watched at the same time, a shared playlist. Doing things builds friendship far faster than exchanging messages about doing things. On MatchFlow, Hang out invites a match to hang out in FreeWorlds, where you can put on a video or dance in the same room.
6. Follow up without being asked. Message again a few days later about the thing you talked about. This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that turns a good chat into a friend.
7. Share a little more each time. An opinion, a bad day, a plan you are nervous about. Friendship deepens through gradual, two-way disclosure, not through one big confession.
8. Keep your boundaries. If someone pushes for personal details, money or contact off-platform before you are ready, that is not a friendship forming. Our safety tips cover what to watch for.

None of this needs you to be extroverted. It needs you to be specific, curious and consistent - and to give the friendship something to happen around.

How MatchFlow helps you make new friends

MatchFlow started from a simple frustration: it is easy to talk to strangers online, and surprisingly hard to find one you want to keep talking to. So rather than pairing people at random, or leaning on a couple of surface similarities, the MatchFlow friend finder weighs several parts of friendship compatibility together - and, importantly, weighs them from both sides.

Shared interests. Counting how many interests two people ticked is not the same as understanding them. A very specific shared interest can mean more than a broad category, and having extra interests should never make someone a worse match.

The kind of friendship you want. Someone looking for a close long-term friend should meet other people looking for that. Someone who mainly wants gaming friends should meet people who actually want to game.

Connection style. Deep conversations, adventure, creative projects, spontaneous plans, relaxed evenings - how you like to spend time with friends says a lot about whether two people will enjoy being around each other.

Communication and availability. Being compatible means very little if you can almost never interact. Overlapping schedules and compatible communication habits give a friendship the chance to develop at all.

Languages. Being able to talk to each other comfortably is one of the most practical parts of compatibility, and it is a better signal than living in the same country.

Age and life stage. Age should not decide everything, but a similar life stage often makes it easier to relate to each other - and for younger members, age separation is a safety boundary as well.

Mutual compatibility. Most importantly, a recommendation should make sense in both directions, not just from A to B.

Questionnaires are what we have before two people have ever met. Afterwards something far more useful appears: what actually happened. Did both people accept? Did both start talking? Did one person carry the whole conversation? Did they talk again another day? Are they still friends weeks later? Those signals say more about a successful friendship than a profile click ever will - which is why the goal is to optimise for which introductions become friendships, not which profiles get the most clicks. A platform tuned purely for clicks eventually becomes a popularity contest.

A match percentage is a guide, not a promise

No algorithm can look at two profiles and guarantee that two strangers will become best friends. People are far too complicated for that. A high score does not mean “there is a 92% scientific probability this person will be your friend.” It means: based on the things that appear to matter for friendship, there are several strong reasons you two are worth introducing.

So we show the reasons.

That is far more useful than a mysterious percentage with nothing behind it. It also hands you something to talk about.

How to tell you are becoming real friends

The introduction gets you talking. After that, watch what happens on its own. Some good signs you have moved from “someone I chat with” to an actual friend:

• Conversation gets easier. You stop constantly wondering what to say next.

• Both people start things. The friendship does not rest on one person.

• You share more than surface detail. Inside jokes, opinions, ambitions, worries and ordinary life slowly enter the conversation.

• You actually do things together. Gaming, talking, watching something, studying, building something, going somewhere.

• Boundaries are respected. A good friendship does not ask you to trade your comfort to keep someone interested.

• Silence is not threatening. As a friendship becomes secure, a quiet day stops meaning someone lost interest.

• It survives the first exciting week. Meeting someone is easy. Continuing to choose each other is what makes a friendship.

Common questions about making friends

The goal is not more matches. It is better introductions.

The internet already solved the problem of putting millions of people in the same place. The harder problem is helping you find the few people among them who might genuinely understand you.

Someone who likes some of the same things. Someone who wants the same kind of friendship. Someone whose way of talking works with yours. Someone who is around when you are. Someone you enjoy talking to - and, just as importantly, someone who enjoys talking to you.

That is the idea behind MatchFlow. Not matching profiles. Not pretending a zodiac sign can pick your best friend. Not rewarding whoever collects the most clicks. Just using what we know about how people make new friends to make better introductions, and then getting out of the way so two people can do the rest.

The best friendship algorithm should not decide who your best friend is. It should make it much easier for the two of you to find each other.