Just one in five American adults has a close friend who is at least 15 years older or younger than they are, according to a major new national study, a gap that researchers say is widening even as most people say they want deeper social connections.
A narrow slice of adults crossing generational lines
AARP’s 2025 Friendship Study found that 77 percent of adults say their closest friends are within 15 years of their own age, and only 22 percent reported having one or more close intergenerational friendships, defined as friendships with someone at least 15 years older or younger.
That figure represents a notable drop from a spring 2019 AARP survey, which found that 37 percent of adults had at least one intergenerational close friend.
The 2025 report drew on a nationally representative online survey of 1,488 US adults age 18 and older, conducted from October 23 to November 10, 2025, with data weighted by generation to reflect the US adult population. The research also included 45-minute online qualitative interviews with pairs of close friends spanning both same-age and intergenerational relationships.
Despite that gap, the study found broad appetite for change. The prevalence and benefits of intergenerational friendships, alongside widespread openness to forming new ones, point to meaningful opportunities to support stronger social connection across ages.
Benefits that run in both directions
Adults with friends from different generations view their own health and attitudes toward aging more positively and are less likely to say they feel left out or isolated, though the report describes this as a correlation, not proof that intergenerational friendship causes better health.
When those bonds do form, they tend to endure. The average length of a close intergenerational friendship is 11 years, with one in five lasting more than 20 years.
The exchange of perspective is a key driver of that durability. Younger people say older friends provide another perspective (61 percent), inspire them (44 percent), and serve as role models (40 percent).
From the older person’s point of view, younger friends help them see another perspective (54 percent), give them a greater appreciation for their experiences (37 percent), and allow them to share opinions and insights (37 percent).
Where people are not meeting
The structural barriers to forming any adult friendship are well-documented, and they make cross-generational bonds even less likely to arise organically. Research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships by University of Kansas Associate Professor of Communication Studies Jeffrey Hall found that it takes roughly 50 hours of time together to move from mere acquaintance to casual friend, 90 hours to go from that stage to simple “friend” status, and more than 200 hours before someone can be considered a close friend.
Those hours are ones adults rarely accumulate because the shared settings where contact once happened automatically, such as dormitories and neighborhood streets, largely no longer exist.
The American Time Use Survey shows that average time Americans spend socializing per day has declined over the past two decades, while time spent alone among young people increased, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has not fallen back to earlier levels. That broader retreat from social life forms the backdrop against which intergenerational bonds are becoming rarer.
As GCN has reported, researchers warn that everyday digital habits risk crowding out the conversations that friendships actually run on.
When intergenerational bonds do form, work remains the most common setting. Among adults who reported a close friend at least 15 years older or younger, 26 percent said they met at work. Neighborhoods, religious communities, and mutual friends accounted for most of the rest.
That workplace dynamic may be one of the few remaining structures that reliably puts different generations in sustained, repeated contact.
The wider friendship recession
The AARP findings land at a moment when adult friendship broadly is under pressure. Sixty-six percent of people in a separate WeRoad 2026 survey said making new connections is more complicated today than in the past, up from 58 percent just twelve months earlier. The survey was conducted across WeRoad’s five European markets.
Nearly half cited a lack of opportunities in everyday life , a third pointed to a lack of time, and one in five identified social anxiety as the main obstacle.
The AARP data suggests the shrinking of intergenerational ties is one dimension of a broader contraction in adult friendship, and that most people, across age groups, would welcome help building them.
For Americans already navigating the difficulty of forming close romantic relationships, the data points to a parallel struggle with platonic ones.
AARP researchers called for practical steps to close the gap, including embedding friendship-building opportunities into mixed-age community spaces such as volunteer groups, faith communities, hobby organizations, and workplaces that already bring different generations into the same physical space.
