communications psychology Article https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00075-8 People are surprisingly hesitant to reach out to old friends Lara B. Akinin & Gillian M. Sandstrom Check for updates Social relationships provide one of the most reliable paths to happiness, but relationships can fade for various reasons. While it does not take much to reinitiate contact, here we find that people are surprisingly reluctant to do so. Specifically, most people reported losing touch with an old friend yet experienced little interest in reaching out (Studies 1-2, Ns = 401 and 189). Moreover, fewer than one third of participants sent a message to an old friend, even when they wanted to, thought the friend would be appreciative, had the friend's contact information, and were given time to draft and send a message (Studies 3-4, Ns = 453 and 604). One reason for this reluctance may be that old friends feel like strangers. Supporting this possibility, participants were more willing to reach out to an old friend than they were to talk to a stranger (Study 5, N = 288), and were less willing to contact old friends who felt more like strangers (Study 6, N = 319). Therefore, in Study 7 (N = 194), we adapted an intervention shown to ease anxieties about talking to strangers and found that it increased the number of people who reached out to an old friend by two-thirds. Evidence from across the social sciences demonstrates that social relationships provide one of the most robust and durable routes to well-being. For instance, individuals with strong and satisfactory relationships report the highest levels of happiness¹, and people who have someone to count on in times of need report higher life evaluations worldwide². While the quality of relationships matters, so too do the quantity and diversity of social connections. Social network size is positively associated with greater well-being³ and even with spending multiple international data sets indicates that people who have more diverse relationship networks also report greater well-being⁴. These findings align with theorizing in relationship science which cautions against relying on any one person to fulfill all of one's emotional needs⁵. Indeed, people who turn to different social connections for different emotion regulation needs (e.g., calling on one person to cheer them up when they are sad, and a different person to calm them down when they are anxious) report higher well-being⁶. Thus, although classic work indicates that high-quality relationships are necessary for happiness⁷, recent research suggests that having more diverse relationships is also a predictor of well-being⁸. People recognize that relationships are an important source of personal meaning and well-being⁹,¹⁰, yet life and busy and complex and time constraints on our connections and social time to meet increasing demands of work¹¹,¹². Indeed, a significant majority of working Americans feel as if they do not have enough time in the day¹³. Social with