Friends of a Different Age
How shared interests, humour and different life experiences can bring people together across generations.
Friendship can begin with a shared enthusiasm, an easy conversation or discovering that the same things make you laugh. A difference in age may bring unfamiliar experiences and perspectives into that relationship, alongside the ordinary pleasures of spending time together. Being open to friendships across generations creates opportunities to meet people whose company you enjoy, including those you might otherwise have assumed had little in common with you.
Tips for Friendships Across Generations
- Follow a shared interest. Music, walking, gardening, sport, books and volunteering give people something enjoyable to do and discuss together.
- Look beyond familiar age groups. Notice who you enjoy talking to at work, in your neighbourhood or during activities you already attend.
- Make a simple invitation. Suggest coffee after a class, a walk or an event connected with something you have discussed.
- Ask about the person’s life now. Show interest in current plans, relationships and ambitions, alongside stories from the past.
- Let advice travel both ways. Each person brings knowledge and experience, and both should feel comfortable asking for help.
- Check your assumptions. Find out what someone enjoys, understands or wants to try through conversation.
- Choose plans that suit you both. Discuss timing, cost, transport and physical comfort openly.
- Share recommendations. A book, film, recipe or piece of music can give you something new to enjoy and talk about.
- Be thoughtful with age-related humour. Notice whether the jokes are enjoyable for both of you and give other subjects plenty of room.
- Allow the friendship to develop naturally. Mutual interest, trust and repeated contact give you reasons to keep spending time together.
Start with Something You Both Enjoy
You get talking after a class, discover a shared enthusiasm for live music and exchange recommendations. A few conversations later, somebody mentions a birthday and you realise there are twenty years between you. By then, you already know that you enjoy their company.
Shared interests feature prominently in research on friendships across generations. In a qualitative study involving interviews with 23 older adults in Ireland, researchers Catherine Elliott O’Dare, Virpi Timonen and Catherine Conlon found that activities, compatible attitudes and shared aspects of identity helped sustain these relationships. Participants described friendships formed through work, leisure interests, family introductions and community life.
AARP’s 2025 study of 1,488 US adults also identified shared interests and hobbies as common ways these friendships began. Everyday activities provide opportunities to get to know someone through doing things together.
Leave Room to Be Surprised
Age can prompt assumptions before we have asked many questions. We might decide that someone will dislike a particular venue, struggle with a piece of technology or have fixed opinions about a subject.
Curiosity gives the person room to tell us otherwise. Ask what they have been watching, where they would like to travel or what they are looking forward to. Share your own answers too. Someone’s current interests can be much more varied than the handful of details you first learnt about them.
Research by Lisbeth Drury and colleagues found associations between positive intergenerational contact and more favourable attitudes towards older adults. These were questionnaire studies, so they cannot establish that contact caused the differences in attitudes.
In everyday conversation, you can start by noticing your expectations. If you are about to say, “You probably wouldn’t enjoy that,” an invitation or a question gives your friend the chance to decide.
Keep the Friendship Mutual
A difference in age can make advice an easy part of the relationship. One person may have experience of changing careers, caring for a parent or moving somewhere unfamiliar. The other may know more about an interest you have recently discovered.
Ask whether advice would be welcome and allow both people to contribute. Sometimes a friend wants to talk through a decision before hearing suggestions. Sometimes they have already decided and would simply appreciate your interest.
The same applies to practical help. You might give someone a lift, borrow a tool, recommend a tradesperson or ask them to read something you have written. Over time, both people should feel able to offer, ask, listen and be heard.
Keep making room for the things you enjoy together as well. A friendship that began through a shared interest can continue to include concerts, meals, walks and conversations that wander pleasantly away from anything requiring a solution.
Work with Different Diaries
Different stages of life can create practical complications. Work patterns, caring responsibilities, income, health and energy all influence when and how people can meet.
Ask about those details instead of guessing. A retired friend may have a crowded diary. Someone working full-time may enjoy an early breakfast together. Either person might prefer an inexpensive outing or somewhere easy to reach.
Be specific enough to make arranging things straightforward. Suggest a time and place, explain what the plan involves and leave room to adjust it. For a walk, mention the distance and terrain. For an evening out, check the likely cost before booking.
An easy arrangement gives you more opportunities to enjoy each other’s company. It also makes it simpler for either person to say when something would be awkward.
Stay Interested in What Comes Next
Friends of different ages may have experienced education, work, relationships and family life in quite different circumstances. Those differences can produce interesting conversations when both people have room to explain their experience.
Ask what an event felt like at the time, what choices were available and whether their view has changed. Share the context of your own decisions too. There may be familiar feelings within experiences that initially sound far apart.
Keep future plans in the conversation. A friend might be considering a course, hoping to move, starting a relationship or thinking about how to spend more of their time. Follow up on what they tell you, just as you would with any friend whose life interests you.
There may already be somebody you would like to know better: the colleague you always end up chatting to, a neighbour with the same enthusiasm for gardening or someone who stays behind after your weekly class. Suggest continuing the conversation over coffee. You can find out whether you enjoy spending more time together, with plenty still to discover about each other.