Old Friends Make Good Medicine

Thinking of getting in touch with a long-lost friend? Here’s some incentive: Social connection and engagement may be important for protecting your health as you age, research says.

Social isolation could raise your risk of mortality by 35 percent, according to a review of 86 studies involving participants ages 50 to 103 published in Aging Clinical and Experimental Research in 2025. On the flip side, those with close, stable relationships were happier than those with fewer social ties, according to a study published in The International Journal of Aging and Human Development in 2025. That study analyzed data from 15,758 people ages 50 and older. 

Research has also linked an active social life to a lower risk of dementia and better longevity overall.

Reconnecting with old friends is sometimes easier than making new ones because you have a history of shared memories, says Lara Aknin, a professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. It’s a way to “bring someone you care about back into your life quickly,” says Aknin, who co-authored a 2025 report in Collabra: Psychology looking at how and why we reach out to old friends. 

Consider these two tips when you reach out to rekindle a friendship:

• Prioritize face-to-face interaction. Technology can help you reconnect, but “meeting face-to-face still trumps anything else, including the phone,” says Robin Dunbar, emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford. “I suspect that if you don’t see the whites of your friends’ eyes from time to time, no amount of Facebook contact will maintain the quality of a friendship.” That said, reaching out via text, email or social media can be a great first step — and a way to plan an in-person visit. “Social media allows us to catch up and keep relationships ticking,” Dunbar says.
• Expect old friends to have new views. Longtime friendships often endure because of common interests and tastes, from music and humor to politics and religion. But if you haven’t talked to an old friend in 20 years, you may find they have new opinions on many subjects. “Friends normally change together. They influence each other,” Dunbar says. “But when they are apart for a long time and eventually meet up again, they may have nothing in common. Some close friends have changed too much.”

You may be able to jump-start only a handful of your oldest, closest friendships, Dunbar says — but these friendships can be our healthiest, most satisfying connections.