College students have elevated rates of loneliness.

Structured befriending activities can help form friendships.

Having one friend helps bolster well-being and mental health.

"Young adults are inundated with ideas that the college experience will be the best 4 years of their lives, but research has demonstrated that students often feel their actual experiences are different than what they expected (Moeller & Seehuus, 2019; Richardson et al., 2017), causing a lack of quality of their social connections (Larson et al., 1982; Laursen & Hartl, 2013; Lim et al., 2016; Lodder et al., 2017; Moeller & Seehuus, 2019). Experiencing shame behind this feeling of being isolated in the college experience can further amplify loneliness (Lim et al., 2016; Moeller & Seehuus, 2019)." (Wodika et al., 2024, p. 292)

As new and returning students head back to college and university campuses, it’s important they strive academically but it’s also important that students make efforts to connect socially to others—to make at least one friend. Graduate student Mikaela Dahlman and I recently wrote about loneliness in college students. Published in the Social and Emotional Learning Journal, we argued that college is a context rich with opportunities for students to hone their social and emotional competencies. Students whose social and emotional skills are........

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