Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30? (2012)
I think the elephant in the room for making new friends over 30, is stagnation in one&#x27;s daily routine caused by one&#x27;s job.<p>I don&#x27;t think anything changed dramatically in the last 60 or so years on this point, even with the development of social media; by the time you&#x27;re 30, you&#x27;re basically done making friends.<p>The article glossed over it, but in your childhood and teens, you&#x27;re surrounded by a new group of  people every 5 or so years, and just through sheer quantity, you&#x27;re likely to make at least a few friends. Throw on team sports, extracurriculars, clubs, and the ease of introductions in a school environment, and it&#x27;s almost impossible not to make a few friends all the way into your late 20s.<p>Somewhere around when you turn 25 or so, though, without substantial effort, things stabilize. If you were going to leave your home, you probably did, and you&#x27;re settled in. You and your old friends start to marry and have kids, and both of these occupy your free time (and theirs). You may have bought a house or found a job you want to settle into for a while, with plans to stick around for several years.<p>For at least 8 hours of your day, you are at work, interacting with people in an environment toxic for creating trusting friendships (You&#x27;re competing for the same roles, titles, bonuses, etc.), and worse, these people you&#x27;re competing with are almost always the exact same people, so if you&#x27;re not really friends with any of them immediately, that&#x27;s basically never going to change.<p>With the remaining time in your evenings, you&#x27;ll also settle into a routine. You won&#x27;t be playing sports anymore, and if you have hobbies, you&#x27;ll generally be doing them with the same small consistent set of people in your area, assuming you do them with others at all.<p>So, in short, if your 8-hour workday isn&#x27;t a time to make friends, and you&#x27;re not interacting with people in a way that leads to making friends in your 8-hour evenings, when the hell do you expect to be making your friends over 30, during your 8-hours asleep?