Sustaining Your Social Network

The Science of Connection

Social Connection Is the Most Consistent Predictor of Healthy Ageing

The research on this is remarkably consistent across decades and cultures: the quality and quantity of your social connections is one of the most powerful predictors of longevity, cognitive health, and day-to-day wellbeing. More predictive than diet, exercise, or even genetics.

Yet social networks naturally contract after 50. Careers end. Children leave. Friends move. Life changes in ways that require active effort to maintain the connections that sustain us — and equally active effort to build new ones.

The tools here are the ones our members actually use to do both.

Curated Tools

Our Top Picks for Your Social Life

Tools that make connection easier — both sustaining old friendships and building new ones.

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Staying in Touch

Marco Polo

Asynchronous video messaging that is far more personal than texting and less demanding than scheduling a call. Our members consistently describe it as the single most effective tool for maintaining close friendships with people in different time zones or with different schedules.

★★★★★ 4.8 · Top Pick Top Pick

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Meeting People

Meetup

Local interest-based groups for almost every imaginable activity. The shared-interest format removes the pressure of purely social contexts, making it easier to form genuine connections. Our members' most-recommended tool for building a new social circle after a major life change.

★★★★☆ 4.5 · Member favourite

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Local Community

Nextdoor

The neighbourhood social network. Useful for local recommendations, community events, and the low-key social connection with immediate neighbours that often becomes more meaningful as we spend more time at home. Better than its reputation suggests when used well.

★★★★☆ 4.2 · Locally valuable

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Group Communication

The dominant standard for family and friend group chats across Europe. Voice notes add warmth and personality to group communication that text alone cannot achieve — and are used far more naturally here than anywhere else in the world. Essential for staying connected across borders and time zones.

★★★★★ 4.7 · Universally used

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Sharing Memories

Google Photos

The best tool for sharing photos with family and friends — automatic organisation, face recognition, and shared albums that grandchildren and adult children can contribute to. The "Memories" feature surfaces photos from this day in past years in a way members consistently find genuinely moving.

★★★★★ 4.6 · Widely loved

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Intellectual Community

U3A (University of the Third Age)

Europe's largest peer-learning movement for people no longer in full-time employment — with thousands of local groups across the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and beyond. Members teach each other in every subject imaginable. Both the intellectual richness and the friendships formed are consistently described as transformatively positive additions to the week.

★★★★★ 4.9 · Editor's choice

The Research

What the Loneliness Epidemic Teaches Us About the 50s and Beyond

Loneliness rates in adults over 50 have been rising for two decades — driven by a combination of life transitions, geographic mobility, and the hollowness of passive social media consumption as a substitute for genuine connection.

The interventions that actually help, according to the research, share common characteristics. They create regular, repeated contact. They involve shared activity or purpose. And they ask something of us — which is precisely what makes them valuable.

✓ Weekly, recurring commitments create the strongest connections
✓ Shared purpose (classes, volunteering, projects) accelerates friendship formation
✓ Vulnerability — sharing something real — is required for genuine closeness
✓ Proactive outreach, not waiting to be contacted, is the decisive variable
✓ Quality of three or four close friendships matters more than quantity

Read Our Social Guide

Quick Wins

Three Things to Do This Week

Simple, high-impact actions for strengthening your social connections.

Send Three Voice Notes

Pick three people you have been meaning to contact and send each of them a 60-second voice note on WhatsApp. Not a text. A voice note — your actual voice. The response rate, and the warmth of those responses, will likely surprise you.

Join One Weekly Activity

Find one recurring local activity — a class, a group, a club — and commit to attending for six weeks. The first session is always the hardest. By the sixth, it is typically something members look forward to all week.

Schedule the Trip

Identify a friend you have not seen in too long and contact them today about visiting. Not a vague "we should do something soon" — an actual date. Members who have specific trips to look forward to with close friends consistently report it as one of the most reliable sources of joy in their lives.