When I was in elementary school, I knew two things about Liz: She dotted her i’s with bubbles, and she couldn’t do a handstand. The first I learned from the name plate on her desk, and the second because we spent hours during recess trying to “teach” each other how to walk on our hands. After a week of face-plants and grass stains, I added a third thing to my list: She was my best friend. That’s all it took. No “we should hang out sometime,” no “we should exchange numbers” (not like we had phones then anyhow), and certainly no agonizing for three days over whether double-texting is a social crime. It was simply: handstand, face-plant, friendship, forever.
And you likely have a similar story.
But making friends as an adult is a whole different thing. I’ve been a fitness teacher for more than a decade, which has given me a front-row seat to watching adult friendships form. For example, there were two women in my early morning hot Pilates class who showed up every Monday and Wednesday for months to sweat, shake and silently swear at me. They usually placed their mats next to each other. They could ID the other person’s water bottle in a lineup. They noticed when the other got a new pedicure. Heck, they spent months inches away from each other wearing less clothing than professional gymnasts, and yet they’d never said much beyond “good morning.”
One day, I introduced them, telling them they had a lot in common. There was an awkward silence before one said, “So I see you also like suffering in a dark room with strangers before dawn,” and from that point on, I got to watch a beautiful friendship develop. Now they grab smoothies together, chat about their kids and even know each other’s last names.
It’s a process I’ve watched dozens of times: going from head nods to words to whole sentences to, eventually, whole friendships, with birthday texts, carpools, the whole shebang. This can take months or even years—but it doesn’t have to. In fact, there’s an elementary school tactic to making friends as an adult that forges those relationships on a truncated timeline. I spoke to three friendship experts about this surprisingly simple, slightly embarrassing, extremely effective technique that you actually mastered by the time you were 7 and just kind of forgot.
Read on to find out what it is so you can make new connections more easily and expand your social circle in all sorts of wonderful ways.
Get Reader’s Digest’s Read Up newsletter for more life hacks, etiquette, humor, cleaning, travel, tech and fun facts all week long.
Why is making friends as an adult so much harder?
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of making friends, we need to address this head-scratching part of social interactions and how they change as we get older. “Adults make friendship much harder than it needs to be,” says Kyler Shumway, PsyD, a licensed psychologist who is also the author of The Friendship Formula and the host of Science of Friendship. “We sit around waiting for friendship in a world that lacks structure for adult connection, we age and diversify, and see less and less in common. And then, when we do have opportunities for friendship, we keep our cards close to the chest because we’re afraid of getting burned.”
The stakes here are bigger than just having someone to sit with at lunch in the office. “We have a basic psychological and biological need to be connected to other people,” says Alan Rozanski, MD, a professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who studies social connectivity. He points to research from a landmark 1979 study of nearly 7,000 adults, which found that people with the fewest social ties were significantly more likely to die within the study period than those with the strongest ones, regardless of how healthy they were to begin with. “And every study since has confirmed it.”
What is the elementary school tactic that can help you make friends as an adult?
You ready for this? Sit at the same table. For kids, it’s the actual lunch table. For adults, it doesn’t have to be that literal, although it can be. Let’s call in the Lunch Table Effect. Here’s how it works: Choose one place (a running club, a mom group, a gym, a trivia night, a theater group, a pickleball league), show up consistently, notice the others who are also there, and be open. Eventually, those people become familiar and then friendly and then, with the help of some vulnerability, real friends.
“Kids become friends with whoever they keep ending up next to, and it’s not that different for adults,” Shumway says. He explains that friendship needs the three E’s: engagement, experience and emotional bonding. Those translate, respectively, to opportunities to meet people, time invested together and some real connection. Sitting at the same table checks off the first two almost automatically.
Science backs this up: A foundational study of relationships done by the University of Kansas found that it takes about 50 hours together for adults to go from strangers to casual friends, 90 hours to become real friends and at least 200 hours to be truly close friends. And guess what—90 hours is basically an elementary school’s semester worth of recess, and 200 is just over a school year.
That said, it’s not just about time. The researchers found that time spent with people in required settings, like a work meeting or a mandatory class, does very little for sparking friendships. You can share a cubicle wall with someone for years and still think of them as “Bob whose middle name is ‘from accounting.’” The hours that truly count are the ones that you actively choose. This is the part that’s built in for children through school recesses, parks and play dates. As an adult, you have to create your own version of lunch and recess.
Tayler Meade, a mental health coach and the author of A Note to the One Left Walking in the Grass, adds an important related habit kids have that adults tend to lose: They leave a seat open. “We can start choosing to leave seats open, metaphorically and physically,” she says, “instead of saving them for people we think we’re supposed to connect with.”
But sitting at the same table is just the first step. At some point, someone is going to have to say something, and this requires a measure of vulnerability that many adults are not comfortable with. “Kids are naturally more willing to be vulnerable, to put themselves out there,” Dr. Rozanski says. “It can feel scary or too risky to adults, but offering a little vulnerability is how we build reciprocal relationships.” Vulnerability is how you get to the third “E”: emotional bonding.
You don’t have to say anything profound; you just have to say something. Shumway is a good example of how this works. He shares that in grad school, he’d been hitting it off with a classmate named Dan over lunch, until the conversation ran dry and things got awkwardly quiet. So he decided to just say the thing out loud: “Dan, I’m going to try to be real vulnerable with you. I’m not really sure how to make a friend. I don’t have any, really, and I’m not sure if I know how. But I like you, you’re a cool dude, and I want to try to be friends with you.” Dan grinned. “I was just starting to think you didn’t like me,” he said. Dan is now Shumway’s best friend, weekly workout buddy and co-speaker on friendship and neurodiversity.
Why does the Lunch Table Effect work so well?
The Lunch Table Effect works because it solves two of the trickiest parts of making adult friends—proximity and time—while keeping things relatively low stakes. Really, all you need to do is keep showing up.
Nostalgia is a big part of the appeal. Sitting at the same table (or being on the same team or in the same exercise class) reminds adults of the fun things they used to do when they were kids, when life felt simpler. By the time you’re an adult, you’re juggling so many responsibilities that the thought of adding one extra thing—even if that is a new friend—can feel overwhelming. So you need to take it back to the primary school level, Dr. Rozanski says.
How do you do that? By being deliberate. This intentionality is super important because you prioritize things that you actively choose. “Things that are important but not urgent, like friends, are the easiest things to bump to next week, so you have to be intentional about it,” he explains. “You need to intentionally find your ‘lunch table.’”
And lastly, it’s low pressure by design. You’re not asking anyone to be your best friend and drive you to the airport at 2 a.m. You’re just asking them to play pickleball next week. Then the repetition locks in the path to friendship.
What happens in our brains when we do this?
Every time you show up somewhere familiar, your brain takes familiar people from the “stranger, therefore possibly unsafe” category and reclassifies them as “probably safe,” which settles down your whole nervous system. It’s called the mere-exposure effect, the well-documented phenomenon that the more familiar things (and people) become, the more we like them. So every game night or yoga class where you see the same faces is another reinforcement to your brain that these people are OK.
Shared positive experiences also light up our neural pathways in ways that other things don’t. Dr. Rozanski points out that laughing or doing something enjoyable together triggers the feel-good brain chemistry that bonds people. And it’s one reason why “misery loves company” activities (a killer workout, a chaotic trivia round, truly bad karaoke) tend to bond people even faster. Dr. Rozanski references psychologist Daniel Goleman’s book Social Intelligence, which details the neuroscience of connection, including mirror neurons—brain cells that fire both when we act and when we watch someone else act, part of how we come to feel empathy for others. And oxytocin, sometimes nicknamed the “bonding hormone,” is released during positive social connections and seems to be part of what causes people to trust each other.
But the real magic isn’t the hormones, he says. It’s in the repetition and consistency, which trains our brains and calms our nervous system.
What will give this a higher probability of success?
Our experts have a few simple tips to make the Lunch Table Effect work faster and more effectively:
- Put cheese on the broccoli. “Social interaction can feel a lot like broccoli,” Shumway says. “We know it’s healthy and good for us, but it’s not always appealing.” His fix: Pick a “table” you’d enjoy sitting at, even if you never made a single friend there. Like moving? Try a climbing gym or hiking group. Like reading? Join a book club. Can’t find a group that fits? Start one. Shumway runs a recurring D&D game wherever he lives because he genuinely loves it, friends or no friends.
- Skip the small talk (once you’ve earned the right to). Once you’ve become acquaintances, skip past the “some weather we’re having” for a line with more substance, like: “What’s something you’re really excited about this week?” People consistently underestimate how much they’ll enjoy a deeper conversation even with someone they barely know, and they tend to feel happier and more connected than if they stuck to small talk.
- Say hi to everyone, not just your favorite person. Meade is big on this one. The more you look around for others to include, the more potential friends you will find, even if they’re not the ones you’d usually think of first. Even brief interactions make you feel happier, and practicing on low-stakes strangers makes the real invitations feel easier.
- Move away from the table eventually. The table is great for establishing a relationship, but true friendships evolve past one single activity. Remember, hours spent purely inside one closed system don’t build closeness on their own—the relationship needs proof it can survive outside its original habitat.
- Schedule it. Yes, on your actual calendar. Because friendship falls into that “important but not urgent” quadrant, Dr. Rozanski suggests deciding in advance how often you’ll show up—weekly, twice a month, whatever—instead of leaving it to whenever you happen to feel like it.
- Give it at least three tries. Too many adults go to one dance class, don’t make a friend, then give up and go home. Or they’ll have a small rough patch and decide the other person isn’t worth it. But kids don’t give up after the first try, and “they can disagree during playtime and hug at the end of the day,” Meade says. Adults tend to treat one awkward interaction as a final verdict. Shumway’s rule of thumb: Try connecting three times before reading it as a genuine no.
What mistakes should you avoid?
The biggest risks here aren’t rejection or looking silly—they’re the little mistakes that torpedo the friendship before it can really get going.
- Don’t assume proximity is enough. If your only shared “table” is a required one, then pick a chosen activity on top of it—lunch away from your desk, happy hour, anything you’re both there for by choice.
- Don’t be glued to your phone. Dr. Rozanski describes how people used to talk to their neighbors on the bus, and now, everyone is on their phones. But every scroll is a small, missed opportunity for a connection. And this includes taking out your earbuds if you’re used to wearing them everywhere.
- Don’t resort to gossip. A common friendship mistake is to “bond” over talking about others. “Those are empty calories,” Dr. Rozanski says, referring to quick, easy chatter about other people, as opposed to “the stuff that fills us up,” which comes from actually giving something of yourself. Not only that, but gossip can backfire by making you look less trustworthy.
- Don’t mask. Kids haven’t yet learned to mask out of fear of shame or rejection, so they’ll tell a total stranger they like their shirt, or that their dog just died, within minutes of meeting them. Shumway says adults tend to do the opposite, presenting a safe, buttoned-up version instead. Closeness comes from being willing to be seen, not from being impressive.
Where might you have the most luck with this technique?
The optimal places for the Lunch Table Effect are anywhere that you’d see the same people consistently. Good bets include:
- A recurring class you’d enjoy anyway—dance, spin, pottery, improv, a language course
- An athletic group, like a running club, rec league or regular pickup game
- Trivia night, or a bar that hosts the same event weekly
- Volunteering for a cause you genuinely care about
- A book club, hobby group or recurring tabletop game
- A place of worship or community group you attend regularly
- The dog park at roughly the same time each day
Worse bets are the places designed for exactly one interaction and then never again: a wedding you’re not hosting, a one-off networking mixer, a concert (too loud to actually talk), or a party where you know exactly one other person who promptly disappears. None of those gives the Lunch Table Effect anything to work with, because there’s no “again” built in. The magic sauce isn’t the table itself. It’s the repeat visit.
So the next time you’re sweating next to the same stranger for the third month in a row, skip the compliment about their water bottle and instead try what Shumway did with Dan and just say the thing: “Hey, I feel like we should actually know each other’s names by now.” Worst case, it’s a little embarrassing for three seconds. Best case, you’ve just picked your table.
About the experts
|
Why trust us
At Reader’s Digest, we’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. For this piece on the Lunch Table Effect, Charlotte Hilton Andersen tapped her experience as a longtime journalist who frequently writes about communication, psychology, etiquette and common curiosities for Reader’s Digest. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Kyler Shumway, PsyD, licensed psychologist and CEO of Deep Eddy Psychotherapy; personal interview, Sept. 15, 2026
- Alan Rozanski, MD, professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; personal interview, Sept. 16, 2026
- Tayler Meade, board-certified mental health and brain health coach and author; personal interview, Sept. 16, 2026
- Journal of Social and Personal Relationships: “How Many Hours Does It Take to Make a Friend?”
- American Journal of Epidemiology: “Social Networks, Host Resistance, and Mortality: A Nine-Year Follow-up Study of Alameda County Residents”
- Roots of Loneliness Project: “Loneliness Statistics”
The post This Elementary School Tactic Is a Surefire Way to Make Friends as an Adult (Yes, Really!) appeared first on Reader's Digest.
from Reader's Digest https://ift.tt/azw5GjN
Comments
Post a Comment