They say women reach their peak much later than men, but that’s not necessarily true socially. Both men and women reach their social peak at age 25, according to new research published in the journal Royal Society of Open Science. Researchers analyzed the phone records of 3.2 million customers in Europe and found that the average numbers of calls to different individuals is highest at age 25.
The number of social connections drops dramatically after 25, but then evens out at age 45. The drop is likely due to people settling down, getting married, and having children. The plateau is probably because of grown children moving out of the house, leaving parents with more free time for outside social connections.
Interestingly enough, men actually have a higher social peak than women at age 25. However, women overtake men later in life. This is probably because once children move out of the house, women are more likely to keep in touch with their adult children, parents and in-laws.
Don’t worry too much about this dip in popularity—according to ATTN, the study explains that when the fall in popularity occurs, it’s just because you’re focusing on a few really important friendships rather than trying to maintain a bunch of superficial ones.
The Washington Post points out that the study isn’t perfect, as it doesn’t take into account the many other ways of interesting besides just phone calls. It’s likely that many millennials have rich social lives that have nothing to do with calling somebody up—in fact, a lot of us probably avoid making phone calls as much as we can, now that we have so many other options. What about Facebook, text messaging and Skype? Still, the findings do make sense in terms of an average life trajectory.
So collegiettes, enjoy your 20s—Because science says you’ll never be more popular then you are now.