The first skill I learned when I became a political science professor nearly 20 years ago was how to quiet a room full of chatty undergraduates.
These days, I often walk into a silent room, with students staring at their phones and barely acknowledging the classmates beside them.
As I read more about the United States’ loneliness crisis, I began noticing a version of it among my students.
In a 2026 national survey of over 40,000 college students, nearly 6 in 10 said they felt lonely sometimes or always. At the same time, federal time-use data show that the share of Americans who socialized in person with family, friends or others on an average day fell from 38% in 2015 to 30% in 2025.
Those and similar other studies capture a familiar contradiction seen on college campuses like my own: Many new students want close relationships, but feel anxious about initiating them and have had little practice sustaining them.
I realized that my students rarely spoke to one another, and went entire semesters without learning their classmates’ names. Many students seemed unsure how to cross the few feet between them and their peers and make the social connection they craved.
I designed a freshman honors seminar, “Friendship & Society,” around this uncertainty, combining the academic study of friendship with practical exercises in forming and sustaining it.
In this course, students examine how an initial exchange can develop into friendship through repeated contact and shared time, and why many potential connections never progress into a lasting friendship.
They consider how friends help shape identity and memory, whether old friends are owed continued loyalty after their lives diverge and whether a friendship can remain meaningful after it ends.
Students also look at how friendship can have strong effects on physical and mental health, making it what I believe is an overlooked public health issue. Friendships can also help shape people’s broader sense of belonging in a community, building the social trust that civic life depends on.
Students test those questions through 10 “Friendship Practices,” a series of experiential activities I designed. Students are asked to share a meal with classmates or visit a public gathering place like a café or lounge to see how these settings can encourage conversation. During a “friendship safari,” small groups walk across campus, noting where conversations begin and where students pass one another without speaking.
In private journal entries and submitted reflections, students record what they expected from each situation, and what happened when they tried to form connections. They make a short film telling a story of friendship on campus and end with a friendship memoir tracing how their own relationships and expectations changed during their first semester of college.
Students read “Stay True,” a memoir about a friendship between author Hsu Hsu and his classmate Ken that shapes Hsu’s sense of himself long after his friend’s death.
Neuroscientist Ben Rein’s book “Why Brains Need Friends” explains the biology of connection and isolation, and shows how positive interactions activate the brain’s reward system while isolation triggers a stress response.
Students also read longform journalism, social science research, public health reports and political philosophy on aspects of loneliness. They also watch TED Talks and films that explore how a brief encounter with a stranger can, over time, become a friendship.
Students learn that a friendship is built from countless moments that may feel meaningless while they are happening. An unremarkable meal, or a conversation that fills 10 spare minutes rarely feels consequential on its own.
Over time, those moments build relational capital, meaning the shared trust and history friends can draw on when life becomes difficult or a disagreement needs repairing.
That reserve reaches beyond a single relationship. Communities become more connected when people have accumulated enough ordinary experience together to trust one another and keep showing up.
By the end of the course, students can weigh different kinds of evidence about how friendships form, develop and sometimes fade. They also become better able to start a conversation, recognize which public spaces make it easier to meet and spend time with others, and identify habits that help relationships deepen over time.
They finish with a clearer sense of how relationships take shape and how their own choices contribute to the communities forming around them.
Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Justin Vaughn, Coastal Carolina University
Read more: Friendships aren’t just about keeping score – new psychology research looks at why we help our friends when they need it Friendship research is getting an update – and that’s key for dealing with the loneliness epidemic A lot of casual friends, or only a few you’re really close with? New research questions that trade‑off
Justin Vaughn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
