The share of American adults who count someone at least 15 years their senior or junior as a close friend has fallen sharply over six years, dropping from 37 percent in 2019 to just 22 percent in 2025, according to a nationally representative study released in March 2026 by AARP Research.
A widening gap between openness and action
Only 22 percent of adults reported having one or more close intergenerational friendships, defined as friendships with someone at least 15 years older or younger, yet among those who do, 96 percent say those relationships offer unique benefits beyond same-age friendships.
The 2025 Friendship Study found that 77 percent of adults say their closest friends are within 15 years of their own age. That 22 percent figure compares with nearly four in ten adults, 37 percent, who reported a close friend at least 15 years older or younger when AARP last measured the same benchmark in 2019, a 15-point slide in just six years.
The AARP research drew on a nationally representative online survey of 1,488 U.S. adults age 18 and older, conducted from October 23 to November 10, 2025, supplemented by 45-minute online qualitative interviews with pairs of close friends, including both same-age and intergenerational pairings.
Where cross-generational bonds still form
When intergenerational friendships do take root, AARP research shows Americans most often meet friends of another generation at work, at 26 percent, with others connecting as neighbors at 12 percent, at church or temple at 11 percent, or through mutual friends at 10 percent.
Once the connection is made, these friendships tend to last. The average length of a close intergenerational friendship is 11 years, with one in five lasting more than 20 years.
From the younger person’s perspective, Americans say older friends provide another perspective in 61 percent of cases, inspire them in 44 percent, and serve as role models in 40 percent. From the older person’s view, younger friends help them see another perspective at 54 percent, give a greater appreciation for their experiences at 37 percent, and allow them to share opinions and insights at 37 percent.
Friendship still rated above marriage and money
The declining rate of intergenerational connection comes even as Americans’ stated regard for friendship overall has risen. In 2025, 95 percent of adults say friends are essential, up from 90 percent in 2019.
Separately, a Pew Research Center survey found that 61 percent of U.S. adults say having close friends is extremely or very important for people to live a fulfilling life, far higher than the shares who say the same about being married at 23 percent, having children at 26 percent, or having a lot of money at 24 percent.
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. The AARP report describes this as a correlation, however, rather than proof that intergenerational friendship directly causes better health. That distinction matters for anyone hoping to translate the data into policy or programming.
Convenience-based connection crowds out deeper ties
Friendship remains foundational to well-being, yet adults are navigating a new reality where convenience-based connection can crowd out the deeper interactions many people still want.
Researchers point to the collapse of shared physical spaces, busier schedules, and a migration of social life toward digital channels as structural forces working against the kind of repeated, unplanned contact that has historically seeded cross-generational bonds.
The finding echoes a broader pattern in American social life. Data from the Survey Center on American Life shows that in 1990, one-third of American adults reported having 10 or more close friends; by 2021, just 13 percent said the same. The share saying they have no close friends at all rose from 3 percent in 1990 to 12 percent in 2021.
Earlier GCN reporting found that roughly 1 in 4 Americans ate every meal alone last year, a 53 percent rise over two decades, underscoring just how much the basic architecture of daily social contact has contracted.
The prevalence and benefits of intergenerational friendships, together with widespread openness to forming new ones, point to meaningful opportunities to support stronger social connection across ages, the AARP authors conclude.
Whether that openness converts into actual relationships may depend on whether the structural conditions that once made them almost inevitable, shared workplaces, neighborhoods, and community spaces, can be rebuilt or reimagined. That concern is particularly acute given that, as GCN has reported, a friendship platform used by 60 million people recently paywalled the features that actually turn strangers into friends.
The full AARP Friendship Study is available at AARP Research.
