Average Friend Circle by Age
Getting married, having kids and buying a house (if you’re so lucky) is basically an exercise in weed-whacking the friendships from your social days. Maintaining those “five best friends” is like hugging candles while they melt.
Our friends groups swell during the single years; they peak and dissipate naturally as we progress through life stages. Researchers found that the average 25-year-old man contacts around 19 different people per month, where 25-year-old women contacted an average of around 17.5 people.
Contact nosedives and by the age of 39, when men and women are calling an average of only 12 and 15 people per month, respectively. The rapid decline in the number of people being contacted by both men and women comes to a stop around the age of 80, when numbers plateau at around eight for women and six for men.
As we get older we grasp but we cannot hold. We’re distracted by children and career. We’re isolated in homes and build habits of ignoring neighbors. Competition with ambitious colleagues is distracting and prevents us from connecting with professional peers. We simply age. A more solitary field emerges organically.