Friendship is not that easy, requiring nurturing and nourishing, not numbing. This is only one of the insights from an interview with Jeffrey Hall, Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at The University of Kansas.
The interview is below, followed by a transcript, lightly edited for clarity. See Hall’s book The Social Biome and follow him on LinkedIn
Hi, everyone. Thanks for watching or listening. In this episode of the Reach Out series, I’m excited to speak with Jeffrey Hall, a professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas and an internationally recognized expert on friendship, courtship, and mobile and social media. He’s spoken to major media outlets, so I’m very lucky to have him here as well.
And his book, The Social Biome, is coming out soon. I’m Yohay Elam, founder of TouchBase, which tackles loneliness by nudging and empowering people to reach out to loved ones. Hi, Jeffrey. Thanks for joining me today.
Jeffrey Hall (JH): It’s a pleasure to be here.
Yohay Elam (YE): Thanks. So before I get into the questions, I’d love to hear a bit more about yourself. Could you please introduce yourself and how you became an expert on friendship, loneliness, communications, everything?
JH: One of my very first projects in graduate school, when I was at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, was on the differences between people’s expectations about friendship. Everybody expects something from their friends, but people vary in what they expect and what they want to get out of their friendships.
That was my first project. I did studies on gender differences in friendship, ideal expectations, standards of friendship, and how we enact that in relational maintenance. Those things took a bit of a backseat for a while because I studied courtship.
Then I got into studying social and mobile media through texting. My first study was on texting, then I did studies on Facebook and impression management, Facebook and self-presentation. I also did some of the early studies on what’s called social displacement—whether social media takes away face-to-face interactions.
I experimented with manipulating social media for well-being. At that point, these two areas came together because I’d developed a theory of social interaction, which includes both media use and face-to-face interactions. That led to a project that gave me a chance to speak to a big audience: how many hours it takes to make a friend.
That paper… I can’t even tell you how often it comes up. It gets tweeted, it was on Reddit recently as a meme, people on TikTok use it. It’s everywhere, which is great for me because I get to continue talking about friendship, something personally important to me.
YE: I see. Thanks. You mentioned social media, and this is a hot topic nowadays. Technology and social media are often blamed for social ills, including loneliness and worse. But technology also makes communication easier, and there are many different types of social media. What kind of usage would you say is nourishing for social connections, and which kinds are more harmful?
JH: To start with, every major technological revolution in communication has caused social panics. People were concerned about the telegram because people were getting married through it, never having met: “Oh my God, it’s destroying traditional marriage.” We saw this with the radio—radio was used for propaganda, but also to de-stigmatize groups and broaden reach.
Television was also seen as a downfall of civilization and conversation. So this is not new. This is a recurring conversation, and it’s important. New technologies make us anxious because we’re unclear how they’ll play a role in our lives.
Specific to your question: my research on texting and friendship really found that people use social media in very ordinary ways. Yes, there is hate speech and other terrible things, and that’s concerning. But the vast majority of users do very everyday things: they text friends and family, share pictures, make plans, send memes, share jokes, look at cat or baby pictures, watch the Olympics.
All those mundane uses are largely a net positive. They don’t move the needle much on loneliness or well-being, but they’re certainly not negative.
So I would say: insofar as your social and mobile media is an extension and complement to your face-to-face interactions, it’s nourishing and good. But if you’re using media to cope with bad circumstances, personal anxieties, or troubles, no form of media is going to help—not TV, not video games, not social media.
So social media sits on the razor’s edge between good and bad. It moves slightly to the good when it extends your personal life, slightly to the bad when it’s a substitute for face-to-face connection.
YE: I see. Making it an extension of life makes a difference.
JH: Exactly.
YE: And an extension of life includes work. Does our culture of efficiency keep us away from nurturing friendships—even contributing to loneliness?
My personal experience: I love running. I run in a group, but also on my own. Starting a run from my doorstep while listening to a podcast is efficient. Meeting a fellow runner and having a post-run beer is more social, but less efficient. Does efficiency contribute to loneliness?
JH: I think there are two ways to think about this.
One is that people who work more spend less time socializing. There’s a strong negative correlation between hours worked and face-to-face conversation. This holds across 20 years of American Time Use Survey data, and globally. People who work a lot don’t make time for relationships.
So we need to ask: why do people work so much? Why are we in cultures that prioritize work above all? Americans often look to Europe with envy—Europeans protect work hours, take longer vacations. Efficiency as sacrificing all other personal goals for career success is a real obstacle to being social.
The second way: friendships are not efficient. Spending time hanging out isn’t efficient—it’s about enjoyment, being seen, sharing experiences, challenging ideas. If we apply efficiency to social time, it ruins the flow of friendship.
Rather than treating friendships as efficient, we should see them as cultivating well-being, thriving, and growth. When we share ourselves without treating others as means to an end, we benefit both ourselves and others.
YE: So giving to somebody else is also giving to ourselves.
JH: Absolutely. Research on affection shows it’s often better to give than to receive. If you have a compliment, kindness, hug, or affection to give, you benefit more than the recipient. And the recipient also benefits. Listening empathically can be costly, but it benefits the whole relationship system.
So yes, we benefit by giving—but it’s also about our orientation toward what we’re doing when we’re social.
YE: Changing the approach. This brings me to another question. I feel so good when I reach out to someone I haven’t spoken to in a while. They’re thrilled to hear from me, which makes me even happier. It’s a virtuous cycle. But I don’t do it enough, and others I know don’t either. What holds us back from reaching out?
JH: There’s a new study in Nature Communications by Gillian Sandstrom and colleagues. She’s an expert on weak-tie sociality—talking to strangers, baristas, bus drivers.
They asked why people don’t reach out to old friends. The reasons: “I don’t know what to say. It’s been too long. Maybe they’ve changed. Maybe they won’t want to hear from me. Maybe it’s not welcome.” In short: it feels awkward.
She found that interventions work when people are reminded that social interactions are usually more positive than expected. People enjoy them more than they think they will. That mindset shift helps people reconnect with old friends.
What this suggests is that people have begun to contextualize old friends almost like strangers—which is a shame, because old friends have prior investment and can be reignited with a simple text.
So really, we need to change our mindset: reconnecting brings lots of benefits and very few costs.
YE: So it’s back to seeing it as something efficient—a small message that brings a big benefit.
JH: Exactly.
YE: We touched a bit on face-to-face versus technology. I read in one of your interviews that moving to a new place can trigger loneliness. That’s my experience as well. Should people focus on creating new face-to-face connections, or prioritize old connections online from previous places? Is there a balance?
JH: There’s no magic formula. I wish there were. Moving disrupts your routines—it’s like antibiotics disrupting a microbiome. It can be good, but it still disrupts everything.
Keeping in touch with old friends doesn’t really interfere with new friendships—they’re not mutually exclusive. Establishing routines with old friends helps keep them nourished.
On the new side: my research shows that friendships form relatively quickly if you take advantage of the openness people feel toward newcomers. Say yes to invitations, take every opportunity early, because the window of openness closes after a few months. If you wait, people assume you’re not interested.
So the answer is: try to do both, even though it’s difficult.
YE: Very interesting. You’ve mentioned time frames. Your research shows it takes about 200 hours to create intimate relationships. I feel with my high school friends, where we had strong bonding early on, the relationships are deep—even if we don’t speak for a year or two. With other relationships, without nourishment, they fade.
Is there a way to know when a relationship needs fresh energy?
JH: Elizabeth Dunn uses a great analogy: imagine you’re hungry on an island full of beautiful fruit, but for some reason you don’t eat it. That’s how social interactions are—we have abundant opportunities, but we don’t use them.
If you want to preserve a relationship, you have to prioritize keeping in touch. That can mean emails, monthly calls, birthday texts, annual catch-ups. Small acts matter hugely. But routines are hard, and we sometimes worry about imposing on others. We need to reframe that as giving, not burdening.
And sometimes loss is inevitable—friends drift away. But friendships can also be dormant, like the Resurrection Flower that blooms again when watered. Old friendships may look dead, but with a little nourishment, they reopen.
YE: That’s encouraging. Hopefully TouchBase can help with that. One more question before we wrap up. There’s more awareness now about loneliness—partly due to the pandemic, partly due to the U.S. Surgeon General calling it an epidemic. Do you think this awareness will reduce loneliness and increase reaching out?
JH: I hope so. I deeply hope so. There’s been a sea change—government interest, working groups, international initiatives. Nothing like this existed when I was in grad school.
I think there’s a hunger for closeness. People want to spend more time with friends but find it difficult. I hope awareness helps.
Nick Cave once said that hope is an active stance—you commit yourself to an ideal even if it’s hard and may not come to pass. That’s how I see it. If people adopt an active stance of caring for one another, that’s where my hopes lie.
YE: Very interesting. I’m also a Nick Cave fan—I’ll see him in concert in Barcelona.
JH: Woohoo.
YE: He keeps going.
JH: A lesser person would have been defeated by what he’s gone through. Yes, he keeps going.
YE: There’s a great documentary, 20,000 Days on Earth. Worth watching—he’s a very intelligent person.
Okay, thanks Professor JH for joining today. That was fascinating. I learned a lot. I’m sure everybody else did too. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up? Perhaps tell us about your upcoming book.
JH: I’d love to. The Social Biome, with Andy Morella, will be available at the end of January or early February. It’s already on Amazon for pre-order. It describes all the things we’re talking about—patterns, systems, obstacles to being social. I hope readers find it valuable. We end with a chapter on hope.
YE: Great, we’ll share the link as well. Thanks again, JH. And thank you everybody for watching. As mentioned, The Social Biome is coming out soon and you can pre-order it. You can also follow TouchBase on social media and visit gettouchbase.com to see what we’re building.
That’s it. Thank you very much, and goodbye.