Making Friends at University (and Beating Loneliness)

UK research published in npj Mental Health Research in 2025 found around four in five students reported moderate-to-severe loneliness — and yet making friends at university remains one of the least talked-about challenges of student life.

If you are at university and you feel lonely, the first thing worth knowing is that you are in very large company. Loneliness among university students is common — research suggests most students experience it at some point during their degree — and yet it is one of the least talked-about parts of student life, which leaves a lot of people feeling as though they are the only one struggling with something almost everyone struggles with. This guide is an honest look at it: why loneliness at university happens, why it so often feels like everyone else has it sorted, what you can actually do to meet people and build real friendships, and where to turn if it is weighing heavily on you.

It is written for anyone feeling on the outside of it — first-years a few weeks in when the freshers week buzz has faded, second- and third-years whose friendship groups have shifted, commuters, mature students, and anyone who has looked around a lecture hall and thought everyone else already found their people. The single most reliable route out of loneliness at university is shared activity with the same people over time, which is why societies and clubs come up a lot here. This is not advice from on high — it is the honest, practical version, with the reassurance built in rather than tacked on.

You’re not alone: how common loneliness really is

The numbers: most students feel this at some point

It is worth starting with the evidence, because the feeling that you are uniquely struggling is itself part of what makes loneliness so hard. UK research published in npj Mental Health Research in 2025 found that around four in five students reported moderate-to-severe loneliness — and other surveys put the share of students who feel lonely at some point during their degree even higher. Surveys of new students before they have even arrived find that a majority are anxious about loneliness in advance. Whatever the precise figure, the direction is clear and consistent: loneliness at university is not a minority experience or a sign that something has gone wrong with you. It is one of the most common parts of student life.

Why nobody talks about it

If it is this common, why does it feel so isolating? Partly because the people around you are doing exactly what you are doing — presenting the version of themselves that looks settled, and keeping the lonely bits private. Everyone is performing “I’m fine”, so everyone else looks fine, so admitting you are not feels like admitting to a failure nobody else has. It is a collective illusion, and it is remarkably stable: a whole hall of residence can be quietly lonely while each person in it assumes they are the exception.

Loneliness vs being alone — they’re not the same

It helps to separate two things that get muddled. Being alone is a circumstance — an empty afternoon, a quiet flat. Loneliness is a feeling — the sense of lacking the connection you want. You can be alone and perfectly content, and you can be lonely in a crowded room or a busy group chat. This matters because the fix for loneliness is not simply “be around more people.” It is building connections that actually feel meaningful, which is a different and more achievable task than just filling your calendar.

Why it happens — and the comparison trap

Everything social resets at once

University loneliness is not a character flaw; it is a predictable response to an unusual situation. When you start university, almost every social structure you have ever relied on resets simultaneously. The friends you have known for years are suddenly not down the corridor. Your family is not in the next room. The routines, the familiar faces, the easy belonging you had built up over years — all of it is gone at once, and you are expected to rebuild the lot from scratch, in a new place, while also handling a new academic system and living independently for the first time. Of course that produces loneliness. It would be strange if it did not.

The social-media comparison trap

Then there is the phone in your hand. In your first weeks especially, your feed fills up with other people’s freshers photos — big groups, big nights, captions about “the best people ever” after eight days of acquaintance. It is a curated highlight reel measured against your own unedited reality, and the comparison is brutal and completely unfair. What you are not seeing is that the people in those photos are often performing the same thing you are, that those “best friends” are frequently near-strangers, and that a posted photo says nothing about whether anyone in it feels connected. The comparison trap makes a normal, shared experience feel like personal failure. Recognising it for the distortion it is takes some of its power away.

Why “freshers friends” often aren’t forever

There is a particular kind of loneliness that hits a few weeks in: you did make friends in freshers week, and now it is quietly not working. This is extremely common and not a sign you chose badly. Freshers week friendships form fast, under pressure, out of proximity and relief — and a good number of them naturally fade as everyone settles and finds the people they actually click with. The friends you have in third year are often not the ones you clung to in week one. If your early group is dissolving, that is not the end of your social life; it is a normal stage of it, and it frees you up to build the friendships that will actually last.

Practical ways to meet people

Understanding why loneliness happens is reassuring, but it does not fix it on its own. The fix is action — small, repeated, slightly uncomfortable action. Here is what actually works.

Societies, clubs and shared activities

This is the single most effective route, so it goes first. A society or club puts you in a room, repeatedly, with the same people who have all chosen the same thing you have. That gives you two things loneliness is starved of: regularity and a shared point of connection. You do not have to manufacture conversation, because the activity is the conversation. The students who climb out of loneliness fastest are almost always the ones who found one or two societies and kept going back. The societies and clubs guide covers how to choose and join without overcommitting, and most of this runs through your students’ union, which exists partly to make exactly this easier.

Your course and your flat

Two ready-made pools of people are handed to you: the people on your course and the people you live with. Use them, gently. On your course, the small, low-stakes moves work — sitting next to someone new, staying for a few minutes after a seminar, suggesting a group works through a problem together. In your flat, time in shared spaces does a lot of quiet work: being in the kitchen while someone cooks, leaving your door open, saying yes to the low-key invitation. Neither pool is guaranteed to produce close friends, but both produce contact, and contact is the raw material.

Communal spaces and saying yes

A lot of loneliness is maintained, without anyone meaning to, by retreating — staying in your room because going out feels like effort, which means fewer encounters, which makes the next attempt feel harder. Gently interrupting that loop matters more than any single grand gesture. Spend some time in communal spaces rather than your room. Say yes to the small invitations even when staying in feels easier — especially then. None of this has to be dramatic; it is just tilting the odds back in your favour by being where people are.

A part-time job as a social route

This one gets overlooked. A part-time job is a regular, structured setting with the same colleagues, a built-in shared experience, and — usefully — money attached. For a lot of students, especially commuters or those who find the standard social routes hard, work friendships become some of the most solid ones they have. It is not the right fit for everyone’s timetable or workload, but it is worth knowing it is a genuine option.

Route to meeting people	Effort	Best for
Societies & clubs	Medium — you have to keep showing up	Almost everyone; shared-interest connection
Your course	Low — they’re already there	Easy first contacts, study friends
Flatmates & communal space	Low — proximity does the work	Day-to-day familiarity
Saying yes to invitations	Low effort, some discomfort	Breaking the retreat loop
A part-time job	Higher — time commitment	Commuters; those who like structure

How to turn acquaintances into real friends

Meeting people and having friends are not the same thing, and the gap between them is where a lot of students get stuck — surrounded by acquaintances, still lonely. Closing that gap is its own skill.

Repeated low-pressure contact is the mechanism

Friendship is not built in one big bonding moment; it is built by seeing the same people repeatedly, in low-pressure settings, over time. That is the entire mechanism. It is why societies work — they manufacture the repetition. It is why the friend from a weekly seminar slowly becomes a real friend while the person you had one great conversation with at a party does not. If you understand that repetition is the engine, the task becomes clear: find the settings that will put you in front of the same people again, and keep turning up.

Going first: small invitations

At some point, someone has to move an acquaintance towards friendship by suggesting something outside the setting you met in — a coffee, lunch after the seminar, studying together, walking the same way. This feels disproportionately scary, because a small “no” can feel like a verdict on you. It is not. Most people are quietly relieved when someone else goes first, because they were finding it just as awkward. The invitations do not need to be big or clever. “Want to grab a coffee after this?” is enough, and being the person who occasionally says it is one of the highest-return habits at university.

Depth over breadth

There is a myth that a good social life means a large social life. It does not. Research and plain experience both point the same way: a couple of friendships that feel genuine do far more for your wellbeing than a wide network of shallow ones. If you have one or two people you can be honest with, you are not behind — you are doing the thing that actually matters. Chasing a bigger group for its own sake is often what keeps the loneliness going, because breadth without depth still leaves you feeling unknown. Aim for real, not for many.

Loneliness later in your degree

Loneliness is talked about as a first-year, first-term problem. It is not only that, and pretending it is leaves later-year students feeling there is something especially wrong with them. There is not.

Second year, when friend groups settle

The start of second year has its own particular loneliness. Friendship groups that were still forming in first year tend to harden, you have often moved out of halls into a smaller house, and the constant low-level mixing of first year is gone. If you find second year lonelier than first, you are not imagining it and you are not alone in it — the structures that threw people together have quietly been removed, and you have to be more deliberate to replace them.

After a placement or year abroad

If you have been away — on a year abroad or a placement — coming back can be surprisingly isolating. The friendships you left carried on without you, the rhythm moved on, and you have changed too. This is a real and recognised experience, not a sign anything is wrong. It usually settles as you re-establish your routines, but it can take a term, and knowing to expect it makes it much easier to handle.

Commuter and mature students

If you commute in, or you are a mature student, the default social routes can feel as though they were designed for someone else — and a lot of them were. The standard advice assumes you live on campus and have empty evenings, which may not describe your life at all. The principles still hold, but the application changes: look for daytime societies and events, use the time you are already on campus rather than making a second trip, and look for the groups specifically for mature and commuter students that most universities run. Your circumstances make connection take more deliberate effort — they do not make it less available to you.

When and how to seek support

Most loneliness eases with time and the kind of action described above. Sometimes it does not, or it sits alongside something heavier, and that is worth taking seriously.

When loneliness is something more

This is the honest, careful bit. Loneliness itself is a normal feeling, not a medical problem — but persistent loneliness can sit alongside, or shade into, something that is worth getting proper support for. Some plain signals that it is worth talking to someone: the feeling is not lifting at all over weeks despite your efforts; it is heavy enough that it is affecting your sleep, your eating, your ability to do your work, or your motivation to do anything; or you are starting to withdraw from things you used to manage. This guide is honest peer advice, not professional advice — and the point of naming those signals is not to get you to diagnose yourself, but to say clearly: if that is where you are, the next step is a person, not an article.

Where to turn: university and beyond

The good news is that there is real, free support, and reaching it is more straightforward than it feels. Your university has a counselling or wellbeing service — it is there for exactly this, and you do not need to be in crisis to use it. Many universities also have a student-run Nightline, a confidential listening service. Beyond your university, Student Space offers practical wellbeing support and information aimed specifically at students, and your GP is also a route in. The student mental health guide covers the support landscape in more detail.

If loneliness is weighing heavily on you right now
You do not have to wait until things feel serious to reach out. Good first steps: your university’s counselling or wellbeing service; your students’ union’s Nightline or advice service; Student Space for student-specific support; or your GP. If you ever feel unable to keep yourself safe, contact your GP, NHS 111, or the Samaritans on 116 123 — they are available any time.

How to take the first step

The first step is the hardest, and it is usually smaller than you expect. You do not have to walk in with everything articulated. Booking an appointment, sending one email, telling one trusted person “I’ve been finding things hard” — that is the whole first step, and the people on the other end of it do this every day and will not be surprised or unimpressed. Loneliness convinces you that reaching out is a burden or an admission of failure. It is neither. It is just the next sensible thing to do.

Conclusion

If you take one thing from this guide, take this: feeling lonely at university is normal, common, and not a verdict on you — most students feel it, the people who look settled are largely performing the same thing you are, and the comparison your phone hands you is not real. It happens because every social structure you relied on resets at once, which is a circumstance, not a flaw. And it is not a fixed state. The way through is unglamorous but reliable: find one or two settings — a society especially — that put you in front of the same people repeatedly, keep turning up past the awkward stage, be the person who occasionally goes first with a small invitation, and aim for a couple of real friendships rather than a big shallow network. It can be lonely later in your degree too, and that is normal as well.

And if it is sitting heavily on you — not lifting, affecting your sleep or your work — that is the point to talk to someone, and there is real, free support whose entire job is this. Reaching for it is not a failure. It is the next sensible step.

The most useful thing you can do today is small: pick one society from the societies and clubs guide, and go to one session this week. That is where it starts.

For where to go next, societies and clubs is the practical route to people, the students’ union guide covers more ways in, and the student life hub brings the rest together.

Frequently asked questions

Is it normal to feel lonely at university?
Yes — research suggests the large majority of students experience loneliness at some point during their degree, and many are anxious about it before they even arrive. It is one of the most common parts of student life, not a sign something has gone wrong.

Why does everyone else seem to have friends already?
Because everyone is performing the settled version of themselves and keeping the lonely bits private — so everyone looks fine and assumes they are the exception. Social media amplifies this with curated highlight reels. The “everyone else has it sorted” feeling is a shared illusion.

How do I make friends if I’m shy?
Through repetition rather than big social leaps. Pick a society or activity that puts you in front of the same people regularly, so the activity carries the conversation, and let familiarity build over time. Small, low-pressure contact works better than forcing yourself into large events.

Is it too late to make friends in second year?
No. Second year can feel lonelier because friendship groups settle and the constant mixing of first year is gone — but that is a reason to be more deliberate, not a closed door. Societies take new members at every stage.

How do I make friends as a commuter or mature student?
The principles are the same but the application differs: look for daytime societies and events, use the time you are already on campus, and seek out the groups most universities run specifically for mature and commuter students.

What if I don’t like the people in my flat?
It is common to get along with flatmates without becoming close, and sometimes you simply do not click. Keep things civil, sort the practical living arrangements, and build your real friendships through your course and societies instead.

When should I get help for loneliness?
If it is not lifting over weeks despite your efforts, if it is affecting your sleep, eating, work or motivation, or if you are withdrawing from things — that is the point to talk to someone. Your university wellbeing service, a Nightline, Student Space or your GP are all good first steps, and you do not need to be in crisis to use them.

References

• (2025). Prevalence and psychiatric correlates of loneliness in UK university students. npj Mental Health Research. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44184-025-00144-8
• Higher Education Policy Institute. (2025). Research on student loneliness and belonging. HEPI. https://www.hepi.ac.uk/
• Student Space. (n.d.). Overcoming loneliness at university. https://studentspace.org.uk/wellbeing/overcoming-loneliness-at-university

Further reading

• npj Mental Health Research: loneliness in UK university students (2025) — peer-reviewed UK prevalence data.
• Student Space: overcoming loneliness at university — practical, student-specific wellbeing support.
• anonfess: Societies and clubs at university · Freshers week · Student mental health and emotional wellbeing