If you’ve ever felt like making friends as an adult woman is harder than anyone warned you it would be, UK friendship statistics back you up. This isn’t a vague feeling — it’s a measurable, widely reported pattern, and the loneliness statistics UK researchers have gathered are worth seeing in full. Not to feel worse about it, but to realise you’re nowhere near alone.
Here’s what the UK friendship statistics actually say about loneliness right now — and what it means if you’re one of the many women quietly looking for your people.
Key Takeaways
- 3.8 million people in Great Britain feel lonely often or always (ONS data).
- Half of women aged 18–24 feel lonely some or all of the time — nearly double the general population rate.
- 51% of Britons say making new friends as an adult is difficult.
- 1 in 10 UK adults have no close friends.
What UK friendship statistics say about loneliness
These UK loneliness statistics show it’s more common than most people assume. According to Campaign to End Loneliness analysis of Office for National Statistics data, 3.83 million people in Great Britain — 7.1% of the population — say they feel lonely often or always.
3.8 millionPeople in Great Britain who report feeling lonely often or always.
Source: Campaign to End Loneliness / ONS, The State of Loneliness 2023
That’s not a niche experience. That’s more than the entire population of Wales, all quietly carrying the same thing you might be — and rarely saying it out loud, because loneliness still carries a strange kind of shame, even though the numbers show how ordinary it actually is.
Young women are especially affected
If you’re a woman in your twenties wondering why friendship suddenly feels harder than it did at university, this is one of the clearest UK friendship statistics on gender and loneliness. A flagship 2025 poll found that half of women aged 18 to 24 feel lonely some or all of the time — compared to 29% of the population overall.
50%Of women aged 18–24 feel lonely some or all of the time, nearly double the UK average of 29%.
Leaving education is one of the biggest, least-talked-about friendship cliffs. The built-in social structure disappears overnight, and nobody replaces it for you. That gap is exactly why so many women turn to more intentional ways of meeting people near them in their twenties and thirties — because the old, passive way of making friends stops happening on its own.
Making friends as an adult is objectively difficult — not just for you
This is the UK friendship statistic that tends to land hardest, because it directly contradicts the quiet assumption that everyone else finds this easy. According to YouGov’s Friendship Study, 51% of Britons say they find it difficult to make new friends: 35% say it is fairly difficult, and 16% say it is very difficult.
Over half of Britain finds this hard
51% of UK adults say making new friends is difficult — most people aren’t struggling in silence because something is wrong with them; they’re struggling because it’s genuinely hard.
Source: YouGov Friendship Study
If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re bad at making friends, this is the number to remember. You’re not behind. You’re in the majority.
Some people have no close friends
For a smaller but still significant group, one of the more sobering UK friendship statistics applies: research on social isolation suggests that 1 in 10 UK adults report having no close friends.
1 in 10UK adults report having no close friends.
Source: Belonging Forum / Opinium survey of 10,000 UK adults (March 2025)
That figure is a reminder of why just put yourself out there is such thin advice. For a meaningful number of people, there isn’t an existing circle to lean on while they rebuild one — which is exactly why structured, intentional spaces for meeting people matter more than casual advice tends to admit.
It doesn’t get easier with age on its own
One more of the UK friendship statistics worth sitting with: almost 1 in 5 Britons (18%) over 55 say they haven’t made a new friend in the last six years.
Friendship-making isn’t a skill that fades — it’s a habit that needs active upkeep, at every age. Left on autopilot, social circles tend to shrink rather than grow, particularly after big structural changes in life.
How UK friendship statistics change with age and place
The government’s Community and Engagement Survey 2025/26 breaks the loneliness numbers down further, and two patterns stand out. Loneliness is highest among the youngest adults and eases with age: 9% of 16 to 24-year-olds in England say they feel lonely often or always, compared with 4% of 65 to 74-year-olds.
- 16–24: 9%
- 25–34: 8%
- 35–49: 7%
- 50–64: 6%
- 65–74: 4%
- 75+: 5%
Where you live matters too. Rates range from 13% in Oldham to 2% in the City of London, and Yorkshire and the Humber has the highest regional rate at 8%. Women are slightly more likely than men to report it, at 7% compared with 6%.
If you are in your twenties, or new to a town, those numbers are a reminder that feeling lonely is a common experience rather than a personal failing.
“The numbers aren't a verdict on you. They're proof you're not the only one who finds this hard.”
What actually helps
None of these UK friendship statistics are a reason to feel worse — they’re context. The common thread across these UK friendship statistics is that adult friendship rarely happens by accident anymore. The people who build strong social lives as adults tend to do it on purpose: joining spaces built specifically for meeting new people, rather than waiting for it to happen naturally the way it did at school or university.
That’s exactly the gap Gofrendly exists to close — a women-only space built specifically for meeting people with shared interests, without the pressure or ambiguity of trying to make friends through general social media or dating-app-style platforms not built for it. Our guide to making friends as a woman is a good place to start.
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Frequently asked questions
Is loneliness really this common in the UK?
Yes. UK friendship statistics based on ONS data put the number at around 3.8 million people in Great Britain who feel lonely often or always — around 7% of the population — with even higher rates among younger age groups.
Why is it harder to make friends as an adult than it was at school?
As an adult, the built-in social structures that used to create friendship automatically — school, university, shared classes — disappear. YouGov’s UK friendship statistics show that 51% of Britons now find making new friends difficult as adults, largely because it requires deliberate effort rather than proximity alone.
Are women more likely to feel lonely than men?
These UK friendship statistics show younger women report notably high rates — half of women aged 18–24 feel lonely some or all of the time, nearly double the national average — though loneliness affects people across genders and ages differently depending on life stage.
