How to Make Friends Online as an Adult: A Realistic Method

Short answer: Making friends online as an adult takes dozens of hours, so the method has to be repeatable. Pick one interest, become a regular in one place, move from text to voice to video, and turn each good conversation into a habit.

The most reliable way to make friends online as an adult is to pick one shared interest, show up in the same place every week, and move each promising conversation from text to voice to video within a few weeks. The rest is hours. Research on adult friendship suggests a new friend takes dozens of hours of shared time, so the plan has to be one you can repeat, not one you can finish in a weekend.

How long does it take to make a friend as an adult?

Jeffrey Hall, a communication researcher at the University of Kansas, put numbers on it. In a paper published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, he combined two studies: a survey of 355 adults who had moved within the previous six months, and a follow-up of 112 first-year university students. His estimates:

Two details matter more than the headline. First, the kind of hours counts: hanging out, joking around and playing games moved people closer, while time spent working together counted for less. Second, Hall's advice was to make time with potential friends a priority and to change the setting, for example from work to something social, because that signals you want a friendship.

One honest limit: these were people meeting in person or in mixed settings, not strangers online, and the hours are self-reported estimates. Treat them as a sense of scale, not a stopwatch. The scale is still useful. At two hours a week, 50 hours takes 25 weeks. That is why one great chat rarely turns into a friend, and why repetition beats intensity.

Step 1: Choose one interest, not ten

Friendship needs something to do and talk about, so start with a topic you would happily discuss for an hour. Retro consoles, a language you are learning, a TV series, running, cooking on a budget, a book club: any of them works. A narrow interest filters for people who already share your references, which makes the first ten minutes easier than a conversation about nothing.

Pick one and stay with it for a couple of months. Spreading yourself across six communities gives you six sets of acquaintances and no regulars.

On Roulettly, the optional "What you are into" field on the home page is built for this. It helps match you with someone who shares your tastes, and you can leave it blank. If you want a place to start, random video chat with an interest typed in is a low-pressure way to test how a topic lands with real people.

Step 2: Be a regular

Hall's numbers describe accumulated time, and accumulated time needs a schedule. Choose a slot you can keep: Tuesday evening, Sunday morning. Show up in the same server, forum, group or game at that time.

Regularity does two things. People start to recognise you, and recognition is the first form of trust online. And you stop depending on motivation, which fails on exactly the evenings you feel least social.

Keep the commitment small enough to survive a bad week. Two sessions of an hour beat a plan for six.

Step 3: Move from text to voice to video

Text is the easiest place to begin and the easiest place to stall. A friendship that lives only in replies tends to stay a pleasant acquaintance. A simple ladder helps:

1. Text in a shared space. Reply, react, ask a follow-up. Aim to notice one person you enjoy talking to.
2. A private message with a specific reason. "I saw you also play that map. Want to queue together Thursday?" works better than "hey."
3. Voice. A call or voice channel while you do the activity together. The activity carries the silence.
4. Video. A short call, with a topic, once voice feels comfortable.

Be careful not to oversell video. A survey of about 2,000 Americans in May 2020, by researchers at UNLV, the University of Kansas and Michigan State University, found that phone calls were associated with less stress and loneliness, while video chats were associated with more of both. The study was correlational, so it cannot say video caused those feelings, and it was done during a pandemic, when video fatigue was common. Still, the lesson is practical: video is not automatically warmer. Keep calls short, have something to do or discuss, and let voice-only be a perfectly good stopping point.

What video does offer is your face, tone and reactions, which text strips out. Use it as a step, not a destination.

Step 4: Turn a good conversation into a habit

Most online friendships fail at one moment: the end of a good chat. Both people enjoyed it, nobody proposed anything, and it fades. Fix that in the last minute of the conversation.

• Name the next time. "Same time next week?" is enough.
• Give it a shape. Watch the same episode and compare notes, trade a song a day, play one round, practise a language for twenty minutes.
• Keep the contact method simple. Share a handle only when you are comfortable, and not before you have had a few conversations. Starting a conversation with a stranger on video chat covers openers and what not to give away early.
• Follow up once. A short message the next day, referring to something specific they said, shows you were listening.

Hall's point about changing context applies here too. When a conversation about a game moves to a chat about your week, it has become something more.

Why it is worth the effort

The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938 with 724 participants and has grown to about 2,500 people, including spouses and descendants. Its current director, Robert Waldinger, summarises the finding this way: "Good relationships keep us happier and healthier." People who are more connected to family, friends and community are happier, physically healthier and live longer than people who are less connected.

That study is not about online friendship, and nothing here says an online friend is a substitute for local ones. It does explain why a slow, sometimes awkward project is worth doing, and why it makes sense to invest your hours in a few people rather than spread them thin.

Where Roulettly fits

Roulettly connects you with a random adult for a video conversation. It is limited to people aged 18 and over, needs no account, and is moderated, with report and block available on every match and nudity detection running on your own device. The conversation is not recorded, and you can press "next" at any time. You can read the details on the how it works page and the terms.

It is a place to meet people, not a guarantee of friends. Most conversations will be short and forgettable. The rare good one is the start of the ladder above: ask, enjoy, then propose a second conversation. If someone makes you uncomfortable, skip, report or block.

FAQ

Can you really make real friends online as an adult?

Yes, but expect it to take time. Research on adult friendship points to dozens of hours of shared time before someone counts as a friend, and online contact is no exception. Regular, repeated contact around a shared activity is what builds it.

Where is the best place to meet friends online?

Wherever your interest already lives: a hobby forum, a game community, a language exchange, a class, a video chat with an interest filled in. Choose by interest first and platform second, and stay in one place long enough to be recognised.

How do I move from texting to video without it being awkward?

Go through voice first, give the call a reason, and keep the first one short. "Want to hop on voice while we play?" is easier to accept than "Can we video chat?"

How many friends do I need?

There is no magic number. Given that a friend takes dozens of hours, a few people you can talk to honestly is a realistic and worthwhile outcome for a year of effort.

Is it safe to meet people online?

Be cautious with personal details: no address, workplace, financial information or photos you would not want shared, and no pressure to move to another platform before you are ready. Use block and report whenever a conversation turns uncomfortable. Move to meeting in person only slowly, in a public place and with someone told where you are going.

Your next step

Pick one interest today and one weekly slot. Then start a free random video chat with that interest filled in, and end any good conversation by suggesting the next one.

Sources

1. Jeffrey A. Hall, "How many hours does it take to make a friend?", Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, volume 36, issue 4, 2019 (online 2018); sagepub.com.
2. University of Kansas, "How to make friends? Study reveals how many hours it takes", news release, 6 March 2018; news.ku.edu.
3. Natalie Pennington, Jeffrey Hall and Amanda Holmstrom, study on remote communication and loneliness during the pandemic, Human Communication & Technology, 2021, as reported in the UNLV news release "Call Me, Maybe? UNLV Study Probes How People Connected During the Pandemic"; unlv.edu.
4. Harvard Gazette, "Things money can't buy, like happiness and better health", May 2025, interview with Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development; news.harvard.edu.
5. Roulettly, "How it works" page, 2026; roulettly.com.