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How to actually get to know your neighbors

Don’t be nervous! Befriending them is easier than you think and could meaningfully improve your life.

As a 30-something who works remotely, I’ve gone days without speaking to another human. And after living in the same apartment complex for four years, I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know a single one of my neighbors.

My experience isn’t totally aligned with the rest of the country. A 2025 Pew Research report found that about two-thirds of US adults know at least some of their neighbors. But a lot of those folks are older adults in suburban, home-owning environments, the report showed, and they’re more likely to maintain relationships with the people next door. Millennials (aka me) and Gen Z, on the other hand, aren’t nearly as likely to know who lives beside them, data suggests.

There are some good reasons for this: A lot of Americans live in car-dependent places that can reduce opportunities for spur-of-the-moment socializing with people in our periphery. Many neighborhoods also have limited tenure rates, research shows, meaning that people are less likely to be integrated into communities long enough to develop any kind of meaningful connections. Meanwhile, the pandemic led to a decline in community life, and social distancing may have cemented more lasting solitary habits overall. And getting to know your neighbors in our current political climate can be stressful; if you’re a Black or queer person or an immigrant, for example, knocking on a rando’s door might feel like a naive or even dangerous act when you haven’t a clue who is on the other side.

Unwillingness to chit-chat while taking out the trash undoubtedly makes for a less buzzing social life, but as Daniel P. Aldrich, Dean’s Professor of Resilience at Northeastern University, told Vox, refraining from community interaction isn’t just isolating; it’s dangerous.

“The importance of neighbors literally cannot be understood until we recognize how much of our health and our lives depend on them,” he explained. While a large chunk of adults rely on social media and digital communication to meet our social needs, Aldrich said that “if anything goes wrong…those online communities that we are so wedded to can’t do anything at all.”

Aldrich points to Hurricane Katrina as an example. He and his team found that communities with more social capital — aka neighborhoods where people actually knew, and cared for, each other — were more resilient following disaster. “For those evacuees, having strong social ties in the neighborhood was one of the best predictors of good mental health,” Aldrich said, adding that his own family living in New Orleans in 2005 was ultimately kept alive by their neighbors’ quick actions.

Here’s how to get a relationship with the people closest to you blooming, an endeavor that might save your life — or just save you a trip to the store when you run out of sugar.

Face-to-face interaction is........

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