How to Find People With Similar Interests as an Adult

Activity-based friendship: Friendship that develops through repeated shared participation in a specific activity, rather than through explicitly social contexts. Research suggests activity-based friendship is often more durable than socially-initiated friendship because the activity continues to provide a reason for regular contact.

Third place: A social environment that is neither home nor work — a coffee shop, gym, community center, library, park, or similar space. Third places historically provided the incidental repeated contact that generated weak ties and, over time, friendships. The decline of third places in many communities is a contributing factor to adult loneliness.

Interest community: A group organized around a shared interest — a hobby, sport, professional field, creative pursuit, or cause. Interest communities range from informal (a group of friends who all play the same game) to highly organized (a registered sports league or professional association).

Shared interest is one of the most reliable building blocks for adult friendship — not because common hobbies automatically produce closeness, but because they solve the hardest part of adult social life: creating a reason to be in the same place as the same people repeatedly.

Every researcher who studies adult friendship points to the same conditions: proximity, repetition, and the context that allows genuine self-disclosure. Interest-based communities provide the first two automatically. The third — moving from “we both like this thing” to “I actually know you” — still requires effort, but the structural conditions make that effort possible.

Why Shared Interest Works as a Foundation

Shared interests work because they provide what adulthood otherwise removes.

A reason to be somewhere specific. You show up at a rock-climbing gym, a board game café, a creative writing group, a hiking club — not to make friends explicitly, but to do the thing you are interested in. This takes the social pressure off. You are not there to perform social ability; you are there to do something you care about. The social part can happen naturally alongside it.

Natural conversation. You do not have to generate content from scratch. “How long have you been climbing?” “What do you do when you reach that crux?” “Have you read anything similar to this book?” The shared interest provides an endless supply of genuine conversation starters.

Recurring structure. Most interest-based activities have a schedule — weekly sessions, monthly meetups, regular training times. This creates the repetition that friendship requires without needing to negotiate every instance. You will see these people again next week, and the week after that, without either of you having to explicitly decide that.

Where to Find Your People

The principle is the same regardless of the interest: find the organized context where people gather around the thing regularly, and commit to that context consistently.

For physical activities: Local sports leagues, running clubs, cycling groups, climbing gyms with regular community events, yoga studios with a regular class schedule, martial arts schools, CrossFit boxes, dance studios. Most of these have consistent communities around them if you attend regularly enough to become a familiar face.

For intellectual and creative interests: Book clubs (local library branches, independent bookstores, and Meetup all host them), writing groups, language learning groups, philosophy discussion groups, coding meetups, game design circles.

For professional interests: Industry associations, professional meetups, conferences, Slack communities with local chapters, alumni networks with geographic groups.

For outdoor and adventure interests: Hiking clubs, kayaking groups, backpacking organizations, birding groups, local conservation volunteers.

For gaming: Board game cafes and shops with regular game nights, tabletop RPG groups via game stores or Reddit, video game teams and leagues.

The platform question: Meetup is the most general platform for finding organized group activities. Interest-specific platforms (Strava for running, Discord servers for specific games and hobbies, Reddit’s local subreddits) are often better for specific interests. The goal is not the platform — it is finding the group that meets regularly in person.

What to Do After You Find It

Finding the community is the beginning. Converting participation into friendship requires a few additional steps.

Commit for at least two months before evaluating. The first few sessions of anything new are awkward. You are the new person. Everyone else has existing relationships. The discomfort is temporary — usually resolving around session three or four as your face becomes familiar. Quitting in the first month because it has not produced friendships yet is the most common way this approach fails.

Stay for the informal time. The conversation before a session starts and after it ends — while people are warming up, packing up, heading to get coffee — is where the more genuine interaction happens. Show up slightly early. Linger slightly late.

Initiate one-on-one contact. After you have attended a handful of times and have a sense of who you enjoy talking to, suggest something beyond the activity. “Want to grab coffee before next week’s session?” “A group of us are getting dinner after — want to join?” This is the transition from shared activity to actual developing friendship.

Be genuinely interested in people. The shared interest gives you a conversation starter, but what people remember is whether you were actually curious about them as a person. Asking how they got into the interest, what else they are up to, what they found hard about a recent experience — these questions signal that you see them as more than a co-participant.

The Niche Interest Advantage

If your interests are relatively obscure, that can work in your favor. A tight community of people who are intensely interested in the same specific thing often has stronger ties and more genuine conversation than a large diffuse community around a popular activity.

The local amateur astronomy club may have twenty members, but those twenty people know each other, share a specific vocabulary and set of references, and have a reason to be genuinely invested in each other’s presence. The local running club may have 200 members but be much more dispersed and harder to develop real relationships within.

Smaller and more specific often beats larger and more general when the goal is genuine friendship rather than maximum social exposure.

Q&A

How do you find people with similar interests as an adult?

The most reliable approaches: organized hobby groups, sports leagues, classes, professional communities, and interest-based apps and platforms. The key is finding contexts where the same people participate regularly, not one-off events. Recurring structured activities create the repeated contact that converts shared interest into actual friendship.

Q&A

Are interest-based friendships more likely to last?

Shared interests provide a sustaining context for friendships — you continue to have a reason to spend time together beyond the friendship itself. But they do not guarantee depth. Interest-based friendships can stay at the activity level indefinitely without becoming close unless the people involved invest in the relationship beyond the shared activity.

Q&A

What are the best places to find people who share your interests?

Depending on the interest: local clubs and leagues (for physical activities), platforms like Meetup (for organized group activities), interest-based subreddits and Discord servers (for connecting online first), professional communities and conferences (for work-adjacent interests), and local classes or workshops (for learning-based hobbies). The goal is finding contexts with recurring scheduled participation, not one-off events.

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Is it better to pursue an interest you already have or pick something new?

Pursuing a genuine existing interest tends to work better because your enthusiasm is authentic, which makes you more engaging and more likely to persist through the awkward early period. Picking an interest purely to meet people often produces a context that feels hollow if the interest does not take root.

How do you move from shared activity to actual friendship?

The transition requires one-on-one time outside the shared activity context. After a few sessions, invite someone for coffee or a meal separate from the activity. One-on-one settings enable the escalating self-disclosure that converts acquaintances into genuine friends. The shared interest gave you a reason to be in the same place — one-on-one contact gives you a reason to know each other better.

What if your interests are niche?

Niche interests can be an advantage. A small group of people who care intensely about the same thing often develops tighter community than a large, diffuse interest group. The intensity of the shared interest creates a basis for more genuine conversation and faster connection.

Do online communities count for finding interest-based friends?

Online communities can be a starting point for finding people who share an interest, but online interaction alone rarely produces the depth of friendship that resolves loneliness. The most effective use of online interest communities is identifying people in your geographic area and transitioning to in-person interaction.

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