“Keeping up with  
friends helps with  
healthy aging.”   
Jessica Stillman

This past Sunday afternoon, I spent some time visiting with my new friend, Tony, the 101-year-old Stanford graduate I’d met outside Starbucks a few days earlier. He had mentioned to me that he goes to the coffee shop pretty much every day between 12:30 and 2:00, so I stopped by on Sunday after a delightful Mother’s Day lunch with Kathy and Brendan at the Pruneridge Golf Club. 

During my conversation with Tony, a gentleman sitting at an adjacent table commented on something he had overheard in our conversation. Before long, Ed had moved from his table to join us at ours. The three of us talked about baseball, communication between women and men, the benefits and pitfalls of new technology, and a number of other topics. Ed shared that he was currently reading a recently-published book: Who Needs Friends, by Andrew McCarthy. Before I had the opportunity to share my thoughts, the conversation topic abruptly changed to something else.

What I would have mentioned to Tony and Ed is that on my MacBook Pro desktop, I had a file about that very topic which I was planning to use as a resource for a future blog post. Well, today’s post is that post.

In an October 2025 Inc. newsletter, the author, Jessica Stillman, shared some significant information which I found to be extraordinarily reassuring. Those who know me are aware that I’m a social person. I get energized when I meet new people. I am not particularly fond of large crowds, but I like being around people, even more so when I have the opportunity to engage with them in conversation.

In her article, Stillman cited the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has tracked the lives of more than 700 participants for the past 88 years. This study revealed that “the biggest predictor of a long, healthy life is not biological. It’s social. The better the quality of your relationships, the more likely you are to age well.”

This is encouraging news, because while we have no control over our biological makeup, we do have a fair amount of control over our social life.

In an interview with the Harvard Gazette, Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard study, stated, “We think of physical fitness as a practice, as something we do to maintain our bodies. Our social life is a living system, and it needs maintenance, too.”

So now that we know that keeping up with friends promotes healthy aging, what can we do to take full advantage of this realization? For this, Stillman turned to Harvard-trained social scientist Kasley Killam. She suggests the 5-3-1 rule:

• Spend time with FIVE different people each week.
• Nurture THREE close relationships.
• Aim for ONE hour of social interaction each day.
(This doesn’t have to be all at once.)

Killam suggests that a simple telephone conversation can have more of a positive impact than many would suspect. 

We are social beings. We need each other. We need to prioritize interacting with others. To do so is beneficial for both our physical and emotional well-being. 

You can check out Kasley Killiam’s TED Talk by clicking here: TED Talk