It Takes 219 Hours to Become Best Friends with Someone

They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. So maybe it’s easier to just BEFRIEND one instead . . .

“The New York Times” just did a story about friendships and how many people you really NEED in your life. And there’s a fun stat near the end of it: A study in 2018 found it takes an average of 219 hours to become BEST friends with someone.

The study looked at how long people had to hang out over the course of several months to go from being acquaintances to casual friends . . . then casual friends to true friends . . . and true friends to best friends.

It took an average of 94 hours for most people to become casual friends . . . 164 hours for a true friendship to form . . . and 219 hours before people considered the other person to be a good friend or BEST friend.

Obviously, everyone’s different though. For example, around 5% of people felt like they were close friends after just five hours together. And some people never felt close no matter how long they hung out.

So how many good friends do you really need in life? In general, anywhere from three to six is good. Each one after that makes less and less of an impact on your well-being.

That said, the most important number is one. People who have a least one good friend tend to be much happier than people who have none.

(NY Times / SAGE)