When I was 24, newly relocated back to my hometown and searching for a sense of community, an intergenerational friendship wasn’t where I expected to find connection. I thought I might find it with my downstairs neighbors, a grad-student couple with an army of cats. Maybe with my friends from high school, though we had drifted apart over the years. Maybe back at the community theater, where I’d just auditioned for a play and felt an easy rapport with the assistant director, a woman my age who I could imagine becoming a friend.
And while all those connections have become dear to me since (I even adopted a cat from the neighbors!), none of them hold a candle to the kinship I found in my then-56-year-old castmate, who brought his own props to rehearsal and made obscure references I didn’t understand.
When I met Ken, I initially found him brash but kind. He’d make a dirty joke, then immediately look me in the eye and apologize, visibly embarrassed by his own words, as if he couldn’t believe he’d said something off-color in front of me. I’d snort—or, eventually, riff right alongside him—and then he’d look shocked for a different reason. It felt like we were, in real time, discovering that the chasms of difference between us actually had islands of common ground.
There are certain threads that tie us together in ways we didn’t expect. At first, they just seemed superficial, like our love for Dungeons & Dragons, horror movies and dark Irish comedy. But we also both love a good cry—and actually, we both remember the first time we were truly vulnerable with each other as the real start to our friendship.
Now I’m 28 and Ken is 60, and our connection has grown into something I couldn’t replace. He’s become one of my best friends because we took a chance on each other, a choice that research increasingly suggests people across generations would benefit from making. Friendships like ours might look unusual, but they are seriously good for your health. According to a 2023 study published in the Journal of Aging Studies, there are cognitive, physical and psychosocial benefits for younger and older adults who regularly interact across generational lines.
To find out more about why these relationships are so rewarding, I spoke with developmental psychologist Abby Stephan, PhD, whose research focuses on intergenerational relationships, and Marc Schulz, PhD, associate director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies of human happiness and health. Read on to find out what experts say about why intergenerational friendships work, the benefits they offer and how to cultivate one yourself.
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Why can intergenerational friendships be so fulfilling?
The term itself—intergenerational friendships—actually points to the answer. “Inter means ‘between’ and conveys a sense of reciprocity and mutual influence,” Stephan says. “Strong intergenerational friendships leverage this by drawing on a wider range of experiences, perspectives and skill sets than is often present in same-age friendships.” Translation: They have the potential to be a lot fuller and more interesting because they’re not just restricted to your little bubble.
Research on intergenerational relationships has also linked them to a wide variety of benefits. For young adults, these friendships have been associated with greater confidence, higher self-esteem and a stronger sense of long-term perspective. “They help foster an understanding of the ‘long view’ or the ‘grand scheme’ beyond the present moment,” Stephan says. For older adults, they can offer a greater sense of purpose and meaning, reduced loneliness, diminished ageist attitudes and more complex perspective-taking.
Anyone who knows me would probably call me an “old soul,” and anyone who knows Ken would certainly call him “young at heart.” (He might use the word “immature,” but I digress.) Our friendship gives us a sense of kinship that we don’t always find with our peers. Sometimes I feel embarrassed being emotional or reflective around friends my age, but not with Ken. His patience and lived experience mean I know he’ll always listen.
And the benefit goes both ways. “Whenever you are there, you rejuvenate youthfulness in me,” Ken says. “I feel like I’m younger than I am because you treat me like a peer and you’re not patronizing some ancient fool. That gives me joy I cannot fully articulate.”
Are there scientifically proven benefits to having friends with an age gap?
Yes! In fact, decades of research show that close relationships, especially friendships, are among the strongest predictors of long-term happiness and physical health.
Living longer—and better
In his work with the Harvard Study of Adult Development, Schulz has followed participants from adolescence through old age in a study that spans more than eight decades, and the research consistently points to one conclusion: “Relationships keep us happier and healthier throughout the lifespan. And by healthier, I mean physically healthier as well.”
That’s particularly true for intergenerational friendships. According to that previously mentioned 2023 study, older adults who regularly interact with younger adults can experience improvements to their physical, cognitive and psychosocial health. And a 2020 systematic review published in Social Science & Medicine found that older adults who engage with program-based intergenerational interactions show positive associations with their physical and mental health, including reduced depression. They also experience improved cognitive function, social relationships, well-being and quality of life, with intergenerational connections linked to increased physical and social activities.
Improved attitudes about aging
For younger people, friendships with older adults can be equally valuable. “Older people have accumulated life experiences that the younger person hasn’t,” Schulz says, noting that this perspective can help younger friends understand the kinds of challenges they’re facing and what tends to matter most over time.
That perspective can also reduce the stress of younger people who feel intimidated by aging. According to the 2023 study, younger adults with intergenerational friendships showed decreased ageism and more positive attitudes about aging.
The education between generations doesn’t flow in only one direction, though. Asked what he’s learned from me, Ken says our friendship has influenced his thinking about creativity, belief and the future itself. Being around younger people like me and his freshly college-graduated son, Max, has reminded him that growth doesn’t stop with age. “That’s the young teaching the old that age is merely a state of mind,” he says.
How do you make friends of different ages?
You can form intergenerational friendships the same way you form any lasting friendship: by connecting over shared interests and showing up consistently. “Just like same-age friendships, it’s important that the foundation is built on a shared interest, commitment or goal,” Stephan says. That might mean community theater, or it might mean volunteering, joining a faith group, playing on a rec team or finding one place—like a choir, book club or game night—where people keep coming back.
Once a friendship begins, staying connected is key. “The most successful intergenerational friendships are marked by shared commitment, flexibility and willingness to listen,” Stephan says.
Ken and I have found plenty of ways to stay connected. We’ve worked together on countless plays and creative projects. He’s an expert Dungeon Master, running an occasional campaign for a horde of us young people who clamor to see his masterfully painted miniatures. We trade TV and video game recommendations, he lends me comic books I take too long to read, and I proudly display his hilarious Christmas cards illustrated with inside jokes on my fridge. I get to dog-sit for his cuddly trio of mutts when he and his wife, Jo, are out of town. Our most precious pastime by far, though, is our movie nights—one of us will pick out something we just have to show the other, and then he, Jo and I will get together to watch it over a warm meal; sometimes they make dinner and I make dessert, and sometimes it’s the other way around.
Together, all these small rituals have added up to something steady and rare. A friendship built not on obligation or proximity but on choosing each other again and again.
Are there any challenges to maintaining intergenerational friendships?
Friends of different generations may be in different life stages, which can affect priorities, energy levels or communication styles. “Having a casual conversation about communication preferences, like modality, frequency and time of day, can be really helpful,” Stephan says. (I’m sometimes slow to respond to Ken’s texts—something he’s learned to be patient with.)
There can also be the risk of falling into an unintended parent-child or mentor-mentee dynamic. “I think intergenerational friendships ask you not to attempt to guide—at least not without being asked first,” Ken notes. “As tempting as it is to offer knee-jerk opinions, I also am long enough in the tooth now to know that most folks will find their own way.”
When challenges arise, Stephan advises against defaulting to age-based assumptions and instead encourages focusing on who your friend is as an individual. As she puts it, “challenges can be seen as opportunities to have honest conversations, practice empathy and think creatively.”
Are the generations really that different?
“There is more variation within generations than between them,” Stephan says. Schulz echoes this idea, noting that intergenerational friendships often reveal unexpected similarities. “One of the benefits of being in an intergenerational relationship,” Schulz says, “is recognizing that there are probably more similarities than differences among us at our core.”
I’ve felt that overlap with Ken in the most ordinary ways. On paper, we’re “different generations.” In practice, we’re two people who like the same strange movies, the same nerdy games and—most important—the same kind of honest conversation. It all comes down to something called the “homophily principle,” which sounds fancy but is actually very simple: Birds of a feather flock together. According to a 2021 article in the Canadian Journal on Aging, what matters most in intergenerational friendships isn’t chronological age but a “homophily of doing-and-being,” the idea that people connect by being “friends in action,” bonding over common interests and relating to one another in similar ways. What binds people isn’t simply being born in the same decade but having values, curiosities and rhythms of life that align.
At a time when more than half of U.S. adults say they often feel isolated or lacking companionship, according to a 2025 survey by the American Psychological Association, limiting friendships by something like age may only deepen that sense of disconnection. “Relationships are so important for our health that it just doesn’t make sense to limit ourselves to certain kinds of people in our lives,” Schulz says.
Why I’d choose this type of friendship again—and why you might too
My friendship with Ken hasn’t replaced relationships with people my own age. I’ve grown closer to longtime friends, built new connections and deepened my sense of community. What it has done is quietly expand my world. Being Ken’s friend showed me that friendship doesn’t require sameness or parallel life paths—just curiosity, care and a willingness to stay present for someone who’s walking a different road.
That difference is what gives intergenerational friendships their power. The research suggests that relationships across age gaps offer perspective shaped by experience, mutual learning in both directions and emotional steadiness. For me, that has meant having a friend who helps me zoom out when everything feels urgent and being able to offer that same grounding presence in return. It’s a balance I didn’t know I was missing, but it turned out to be exactly the kind of connection I was searching for all along.
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Sources:
- Abby Stephan, PhD, developmental psychologist; interviewed, January 2026
- Marc Schulz, PhD, associate director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development and co-author of The Good Life; interviewed, January 2026
- Journal of Aging Studies: “Who believes in cross-age friendship? Predictors of the belief in intergenerational friendship scale in young adults”
- Social Science & Medicine: “Intergenerational communities: A systematic literature review of intergenerational interactions and older adults’ health-related outcomes”
- American Psychological Association: “Stress in America 2025 – A crisis of connection”
- Canadian Journal on Aging: “‘Doing’ Intergenerational Friendship: Challenging the Dominance of Age Homophily in Friendship”
My Best Friend Is Twice My Age—Here’s Why Intergenerational Friendships Are Surprisingly Wonderful appeared first on Reader's Digest.
