Connection
Resource Hub

UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3)

The most widely used loneliness measure in psychological research. Free, anonymous, no account. Three items adapted from this scale are part of the Crew Role Quiz, which is why you may recognize the phrasing.

A score is a snapshot of how you feel right now, not a diagnosis and not a fixed trait. It says nothing about whether you are good at friendship.

De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale

Separates emotional loneliness, which is missing one close bond, from social loneliness, which is missing a wider circle. Genuinely useful when you can't tell whether you need one close person or more people generally. This six-item short form is also the version the Crew Role Quiz draws on.

A Meta-Analysis of Interventions to Reduce Loneliness

The closest thing there is to an answer to "what actually helps?" Across 50 studies, the approaches that worked best were not the obvious ones. Simply giving people more social opportunities, more social support, or social-skills training helped less than work on maladaptive social cognition, the assumptions people carry into rooms about how they'll be received.

Now well over a decade old, and the authors flag that the strongest-designed studies were also the smallest. It's the best synthesis of its era, not the last word.

Loneliness: 6 Things to Know That Might Save a Life

A short, sourced overview of why loneliness is treated as a health risk and what the evidence says helps.

What Doctors Wish Patients Knew About Loneliness and Health

The medical community's view, written for non-clinicians. A useful reframe if you've wondered whether what you're feeling is "really" a health issue or just you.

Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World

By the U.S. Surgeon General who went on to issue the 2023 advisory. Stories, neuroscience and practical guidance in one place. The most readable single book on adult loneliness we know of. Most public libraries have it, in print and as an ebook.

The Fast Friends procedure (the "36 questions")

Three sets of questions that escalate gently in personal-ness, done with one other person over about 45 minutes. The best-known experimental attempt to manufacture closeness on purpose, and it mostly worked.

The study was run in a lab, between strangers, with a set time and a clear finish. Whether the effect transfers to a friend you already have, at a kitchen table, has not really been tested. Treat it as a good evening, not a protocol.

The "How are you really?" practice

Next time someone asks how you are, give one honest sentence instead of "fine." Notice what happens. It's a small thing you can do without announcing anything, and it's the muscle everything else in this pillar sits on. Start with someone you already trust.

The vulnerability check-in

Share one thing with a friend you'd normally keep to yourself: a worry, a small joy, something you're embarrassed to be excited about. It doesn't have to be heavy. The repetition is what builds depth, not the intensity.

Deep conversation starters

45+ questions for getting past the weather. Useful for the next coffee, a long drive, or any conversation that's been circling small talk for a year.

Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation

The 82-page advisory that put social connection on the national health agenda. Its most-quoted line is that the mortality risk of social disconnection is on a par with smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Its most useful section is the framework at the back, which is aimed at towns, workplaces and health systems rather than individuals.

The cigarette comparison comes from meta-analysis of observational studies, so it describes an association, not a dose. The finding that Americans spent around 20 fewer hours a month with friends applies to the period 2003 to 2020, not to today.

How many hours does it take to make a friend?

The study behind the numbers you've probably seen quoted: roughly 50 hours to move from acquaintance to casual friend, around 90 to friend, 200 or more to close friend. The part that gets quoted less is the more interesting one: leisure hours carried far more weight than obligatory shared time. Hours spent working alongside someone counted for much less. Hall specifically named playing video games as time that counts.

One correlational study, two samples (355 recently relocated adults and 112 first-year students), all time self-reported. The hours are averages describing a pattern, not a target and not a formula. Hall's own caveat is the best one: you can invite someone, but you can't make them want to.

The State of American Friendship

The report that named the "friendship recession." In 1990, 27% of Americans said they had three or fewer close friends; by 2021 that was 49%. The share reporting ten or more fell from 33% to 13%.

Self-reported survey data at two points in time. "Close friend" is defined by the person answering, and what people mean by it may itself have drifted over thirty years.

American Men Suffer a Friendship Recession

The companion piece, and the source of the figure that gets quoted most: in 1990, 55% of American men said they had six or more close friends; by 2021, 27% did. Over the same period the share of men reporting no close friends at all rose from 3% to 15%.

Same survey data and the same definitional caveat. It describes a change in what men report, which is not the same as a change in what men have, though a five-fold rise is hard to explain away.

The American Friendship Project

The finding worth carrying around: over 75% of participants were satisfied with the number of friends they had, while over 40% felt they were not as close to those friends as they'd like. A depth gap, not a headcount gap, which is why "just meet more people" so often misses.

Three separate samples, not one pooled one: national panels of 2,420 (2022) and 2,243 (2023), plus 1,152 students at three universities. Panel samples, self-reported.

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters

The book most often cited by people building something from scratch. Practical, occasionally surprising, and it applies whether you're hosting two people or two hundred.

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

The long account of how American social life came apart and what has worked to rebuild it. Dense in places, but the framework reshaped a whole field.

Your public library's events calendar

The most underrated recurring-encounter machine in any town. Libraries run book groups, language exchanges, maker sessions, board-game nights, job clubs and craft circles. Free, on a fixed schedule, with the same faces week after week. That last part is the one that matters. In Longmont, start with the Longmont Public Library; anywhere else, search your city's library plus "events."

The "same time next week" challenge

Pick one thing you'd do anyway: coffee, a walk, a workout. Invite one person to do it with you at the same time, on the same day, four weeks running. Consistency is the part most adults skip, and it's the part the research keeps pointing at.

Social rhythm tracker

For one week, write down every shared activity you took part in. Then count how many involved the same person twice. Most people are surprised, not by how few there were, but by how many were with someone they'll never see again.

The Belonging Barometer

A national survey that measures belonging across five settings: family, friends, workplace, local community and the nation. Useful as a benchmark, and as a reminder that belonging can be named and asked about rather than only felt.

Read the headline numbers carefully. The report's category is "non-belonging," which combines people who feel excluded with people who are simply unsure, which is not the same experience. The often-quoted 17% figure refers to non-belonging across all five settings measured, not to belonging nowhere at all.

Personal Values Card Sort

Sort 80+ values from "very important to me" down to "not important." The gap between the values you land on and how you actually spend a Tuesday is often exactly where the not-belonging lives.

Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory

The paper that broke "belonging" into four workable parts: membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. Worth reading because it explains why some groups you're technically a member of never start to feel like yours. Usually the influence part is missing.

A theory paper, not an experiment. It has been enormously influential and widely operationalized since, but it began as a definition rather than a finding. We read it while building the 5 Pillars; where our framework converges with it, that's convergence, not independent arrival.

Care To Ask: conversation starters for connection

Daily prompts written specifically to reduce loneliness and deepen relationships. Good for texting a friend something better than "hey."

Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone

Brown's argument that real belonging doesn't require you to shrink to fit. Short, accessible, and the book people reach for when they finally want words for the difference between fitting in and belonging.

The "where do I fit?" map

Draw a circle for yourself in the middle of a page, then a circle for every group or community you're part of. Put the ones that feel like home close in and the ones that feel like obligation further out. The picture usually says something the list didn't.

Identity story exercise

Write three short paragraphs: who you were five years ago, who you are now, who you'd like to be in five years. Share one of the three with someone you trust. You choose which. Nobody is owed the other two.

Purpose: the Greater Good research hub

A free library of articles on purpose, generativity and meaning, drawn from research in positive psychology and sociology. Good for browsing when you don't have a specific question yet.

Is volunteering a public health intervention?

The careful version of "go volunteer, you'll feel better." Observational studies found favorable effects on depression, life satisfaction and well-being, and a meta-analysis of five cohort studies found volunteers had a lower risk of mortality (RR 0.78).

Two honest catches the headlines drop. The observational benefits were not confirmed by experimental studies, and no favorable effect was found for physical health. The authors' own conclusion is that the causal mechanism remains unclear and that trials are needed. Volunteering is worth doing; it isn't a proven treatment.

The Psychology of Mattering: Understanding the Human Need to Be Significant

"Mattering," the sense that your existence makes a difference to someone, was named by Rosenberg and McCullough in 1981 and then largely left alone for decades. Flett's book is the place the scattered literature was finally pulled together. If "purpose" has always sounded too grand to be useful, mattering is the smaller, more precise word for what's actually missing.

An academic synthesis of a comparatively small literature, much of it measured by self-report questionnaire. A well-argued frame, not a settled science.

The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters

Argues that meaning is built from four ordinary sources (belonging, purpose, storytelling and transcendence) rather than one big calling. Useful if "find your purpose" has always sounded like a bigger ask than you can pay for.

VolunteerMatch

Local and virtual volunteer openings, filterable by cause, time commitment or skill. Covers Longmont and the wider Front Range as well as everywhere else.

AmeriCorps

Structured service programs ranging from part-time to a full year, some with training, a living allowance or an education award attached. More commitment than VolunteerMatch, and more scaffolding.

Skill inventory

Write down five things you're good at that most people in your life don't know about. Then ask who nearby would benefit from one of them. Offering help with something you're quietly excellent at is one of the shortest routes to feeling like you count.

The unsolicited note

Send one message today that says, in your own words: "I was thinking about you because…" and then a specific reason. No ask attached, no favor buried at the end. Just the note.

Are active and passive social media use related to mental health, wellbeing and social support outcomes?

Start here, because it corrects something this page used to say. The popular idea that "active" social media use is good for you and "passive" scrolling is bad has been the standard advice for a decade. Pooling 141 studies, this meta-analysis did not support it. Most effect sizes were negligible. Active use showed a modest association with perceived online social support and a much smaller one with well-being. It was also positively associated with anxiety.

A meta-analysis inherits the weaknesses of what it pools: mostly cross-sectional, mostly self-reported screen use, which people are known to estimate badly. The honest read is not "passive scrolling is fine." It's that the active/passive split is too blunt to tell you much either way. What you're doing, with whom, and instead of what, all matter more.

Passive Facebook usage undermines affective well-being

The study that started the active/passive distinction, included here for context rather than as guidance. Two studies, one experience-sampling and one experiment, found passive use predicted declines in affective well-being while active use did not.

Small samples, one platform, over a decade ago. See the 2024 meta-analysis above: the broader literature has not borne the distinction out. We list this because it's still cited everywhere, and you deserve to know what came after it.

Center for Humane Technology

The best-known research and advocacy group on the attention economy. Their material explains how products are designed to hold you, which is a different and more useful question than how long you held the phone.

An advocacy organization with a clear position, not a neutral research body. Read it as a well-informed argument.

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

A concrete framework for using your phone less without going off-grid. The book most cited by people who actually changed something, rather than just feeling guilty about it.

The screen time controls already on your phone

Daily totals, per-app limits, scheduled downtime. The best digital well-being tool is the one you don't have to install. Open Settings and it's there.

one sec

Adds a short forced pause when you open a distracting app: long enough to break the autopilot, short enough that you keep it switched on. A field study published in PNAS (Grüning, Riedel & Lorenz-Spreen, 2023) reported that the intervention reduced how often users opened targeted apps.

The study used data from the app's own users and involved researchers working with the app, rather than being an independent randomized trial. People who install a self-nudge app are not a random sample of anyone. Promising, not proven.

The scroll-versus-call swap

Next time you pick up your phone to scroll, message or call one specific person instead. Not every time. That's not realistic. Just count how many you manage to convert in a week.

Phone-free hour

Pick one hour, the same hour each day, when the phone goes in another room. Not silenced. Not face-down. Out of the room. The first three days are the hard ones; the fourth is the point.