How to deal with loneliness

Numbers like these make loneliness look like a simple shortage of company, and most advice sees it that way: get out, join something, see people. That helps, but it mixes up two different things.

The advisory separates them. Social isolation is “objectively having few social relationships, social roles, group memberships, and infrequent social interaction.” Loneliness is “a subjective internal state” (the US Surgeon General, 2023). It is the distress of a gap between the connection you want and the one you have.

So you can spend a whole workday on video calls with your team and feel lonely. You can spend a quiet Sunday alone and feel fine. Hours with people are the part you can count and change, not the whole of it. That is why the test below counts both.

A second myth is that loneliness belongs to old age. People aged 65 and over do spend the most time alone, 442 minutes a day on average (Kannan and Veazie, 2023). But the advisory reports some of the highest loneliness rates among young adults.

If fewer hours with people is the problem, the next question is how many hours a friendship needs. Friendship takes time together, and Jeffrey Hall, a researcher who studies how people form relationships, set out to measure how much. He asked 355 adults who had moved to a new home in the past 6 months about the people they had met since: how many hours they had spent together, and how close they had become. He also followed 112 first-year students for 9 weeks as their new friendships formed (Hall, 2019).

Putting both together, Hall estimated:

• about 40 to 60 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend,
• about 80 to 100 hours to become friends,
• more than 200 hours, over about 6 weeks, to become good or close friends.

Two details matter as much as the totals. First, the hours came early. The students reached casual friendship at about 43 hours in the first 3 weeks. After about 3 months, more hours with an acquaintance did not seem to raise the chance.

Second, the kind of hour counted. Time working or in class together went with less closeness, and time hanging out with more. Catching up, joking around and real conversation predicted friendships growing closer. Small talk predicted them cooling off.

Hall adds a fair warning of his own. Friendship is mutual, so more time together is “unlikely to be a decision that can be made unilaterally.” You can offer the hours. They have to want them too.

The advisory’s list for individuals is practical, and most of it is about time (the US Surgeon General, 2023), so it fits well with Hall’s hours. It says to “take time each day to reach out to a friend or family member”. It suggests groups for fitness, faith, hobbies and service. And it asks for less time “in front of screens instead of people”.

Something that repeats. Hall’s friendships grew from hours that came close together. A weekly class, game night, team or choir puts the same people in front of you every week. The example person’s two new connections both came from things that repeated.

Calls count, and so do the people you already have. Two of the example person’s biggest jumps were a call to an old university friend and dinner at a sister’s. Old ties need fewer new hours than new ones.

Make the hour a real one. Catching up and joking moved Hall’s friendships forward, and small talk did not. The advisory also says to put the phone away during meals with friends, important conversations and family time.

Take the hour from the screen. In 2025 the average American spent 2.6 hours a day watching TV and 35 minutes socializing (the BLS). One evening a week moved from one to the other is three hours.

A good way to run this test counts the hours with people from what you already write or say about your day, with no timer to start at dinner. Most journaling apps keep how lonely the day felt. They do not add up who you were with and for how long.

One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.

You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: time with family and friends, calls included, your phone, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. A mood check-in sits beside the hours, and a weekly target holds your hours with people against the number you picked.

Write my first day

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Or scan with your phone's camera.

For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.

Loneliness is a feeling and isolation is a count, so the test has one of each. Every day, write down who you spent time with and for how long, calls included. Every Sunday, score the week from zero to ten for how connected you felt.

Here is the example person’s first week, then all four.

When a block lands in the wrong category, as those meals did, it can be relabeled on the Day page with a tap.

The advisory’s own list includes help. It says to reach out “to a family member, friend, counselor, health care provider, or the 988 crisis line” in times of struggle (the US Surgeon General, 2023). It also suggests telling your health care provider about big social changes in your life.

In the US, if you are in emotional distress, call or text 988, or chat online at 988lifeline.org. It is free, confidential and open all day, every day (the 988 Lifeline). If someone is in danger right now, call emergency services. This page reports what research found. It is not medical advice.

Every figure on this page links to one of these. More on time with others in How to be happier and How much time couples spend together.

1. Office of the US Surgeon General (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. US Department of Health and Human Services, May 2023.
2. Kannan, V. D. and Veazie, P. J. (2023). US trends in social isolation, social engagement, and companionship, nationally and by age, sex, race/ethnicity, family income, and work hours, 2003-2020. SSM - Population Health, 21, 101331.
3. Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278 to 1296.
4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (read October 1, 2026). American Time Use Survey, 2025 results.
5. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (read October 1, 2026). 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.