Why we made it
It got harder to see your friends. That’s not on you.
Most people still want the same few friends they always had. What changed is how much work it takes to get everyone in the same room on the same night.
These four numbers decided what Two Peas is. Each one is quoted the way its source says it, with the source named. And each one is followed by what we built because of it.
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26 fewer minutes a day
Americans aged 15 to 25 spend 26 fewer minutes a day with other people in person than they did in 2003. That is down from 61 minutes to about 35. Most of that drop happened before the pandemic. It counts time with anybody in person, not only friends.
American Time Use Survey, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024 data, as analysed by Jean Twenge in “It’s not just you: Americans are still not hanging out”, Generation Tech, 25 September 2025. On the same measure the average across all ages went from 38 minutes a day in 2019 to 35 in 2024.
So the app is about the night you already have, not about finding new people to spend it with.
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29 per cent
People aged 30 to 44 are the most likely to say they feel lonely often or always. That is more than people aged 18 to 29, at 24 per cent, and far more than people over 65, at 10 per cent.
“Loneliness in America: Just the Tip of the Iceberg”, Making Caring Common, Harvard Graduate School of Education, with YouGov, October 2024.
So it is built for people in the middle of a busy life, who already know who they want to see.
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5 people
The people you turn to first, your inner circle, come to about five. It stays about five no matter how big the rest of your network gets.
Robin Dunbar and colleagues on the “support clique”, the inner layer of the 5–15–50–150 model.
So there is no follower count and no reason to add anybody. A pod of four is a full pod.
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200 hours
Becoming close friends with someone takes about 200 hours together. Around 50 hours gets you to casual friends, and around 90 to friends. Hours you both chose count. Hours you only shared a room for barely count at all.
Jeffrey Hall, University of Kansas, “How many hours does it take to make a friend?”, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2019.
So the whole app points at one thing: getting a night you both chose onto the calendar.
What the numbers don’t say
None of this says anyone is doing friendship wrong. A quiet week is fine. Loneliness research measures how people feel over a long stretch, not how anyone is doing on a Tuesday.
It also doesn’t say the answer is more friends. The gap is time with the people you already have. That’s why Two Peas will never suggest someone to you, and why there’s nothing in it about meeting anyone new.
The last number is the one we kept coming back to. Two hundred hours is a lot of Thursdays. Nobody gets there by meaning to.