Why "well-connected" is more than a number
When most people think about their social life, they think in quantities: How many friends do I have? How many followers? How many invitations this week? That framing leaves out what the relationships feel like and how they fit into daily life. The five dimensions below are our editorial way to reflect on those questions.
This quiz measures five of those dimensions: diversity, depth, reciprocity, recency, and intentionality. The overall score is the geometric mean of all five — a calculation that penalises imbalance more harshly than a simple average. Someone who excels in four dimensions but neglects one will feel that in their score. That's not a bug; it's the point.
The 5 dimensions explained
1. Diversity
Diversity measures whether your relationships span different areas of life and different worldviews. Homogeneous networks — everyone from the same profession, the same city, the same bubble — are not inherently bad, but may be vulnerable when one life domain disappears (a job change, a move, a divorce). We treat diversity as a possible form of resilience, not a result this quiz has validated.
Cohen et al. (1997) studied the diversity of social ties — family, friends, work, and community — among people exposed to a cold virus. Participants with more types of ties were less likely to develop a cold. The study did not measure stress resistance or loneliness; it does not prove the resilience argument above. Study ↗
2. Depth
Depth describes how many people in your life truly know you — not just the surface, but the worries, doubts, and dreams you don't put on display in everyday life. Depth can grow through reciprocal self-disclosure: I share something real, you share something real back.
In Aron et al. (1997), pairs of strangers completed increasingly personal, reciprocal questions over 45 minutes and reported greater closeness than a small-talk comparison group. That experiment illustrates one way self-disclosure can build closeness; it does not show that every lasting friendship develops this way. Study ↗
An often overlooked insight: depth is not the same as frequency. You can talk to someone daily and still remain at the surface. And you can see someone rarely and still be deeply connected — if the few conversations you do have are honest and vulnerable.
3. Reciprocity
Reciprocity asks whether giving and receiving in your relationships is in balance — emotionally, in time, and practically. Unidirectional relationships, where one side always gives and the other takes, wear down both parties over time: the giver through exhaustion, the receiver through creeping guilt. True reciprocity doesn't require bookkeeping accuracy — but it does require the fundamental sense that the other person would be there for you too.
Sandstrom & Dunn (2014) found that people reported more happiness and belonging on days with more interactions with weak ties, such as classmates and acquaintances. They counted interactions, not how balanced the exchanges were. Connecting this result to reciprocity is our editorial interpretation. Study ↗
4. Recency
Recency measures how recently you've had real contact with the people who matter most to you. Friendship evaporates — not through conflict, but through silence. Most friendships don't fail because of a dramatic event but because people simply speak less and less often until, one day, contact has quietly faded.
Hall (2018) associated roughly 40–60 hours together with casual friendship and 80–100 hours with becoming friends. For good or best friendship, the estimate depended on the observation window: 120–160 hours could suffice over three weeks, while 200 or more hours was likely over six weeks. These are estimates about forming new friendships, not fixed thresholds or evidence about gaps in existing ones. Study ↗
5. Intentionality
Intentionality asks whether you proactively invest in your relationships — or whether you wait for others to reach out, for an occasion to arise, for life to maintain the connection on its own. In childhood and college, the environment does this automatically: you see each other by necessity. In adult life, those structural enablers barely exist. Relationships maintained without intention systematically cool down.
Intentionality doesn't mean effort. It means choosing. Who do I write to today? Who do I call this week? Which person should still genuinely be in my life a year from now — and what am I doing about it?
What your relationship type tells you
The five types in this quiz — Gardener, Convener, Anchor, Drifter, and Stretched-Thin — are not judgements. They describe patterns that emerge from the interplay of the five dimensions. Every type has real strengths and genuine blind spots. The value of the type lies not in the label but in the three suggestions tailored to your weakest dimension.
A Gardener who is weak in diversity gets different suggestions from a Gardener who struggles with reciprocity. Same label, different challenge — which is why the weakest dimension is always shown explicitly.
How to share your result
The shared link contains only your result type and the five dimension scores — no individual answers, no personal data. You can share the result with friends and compare: who is which type? Where do we overlap, where do we complement each other?
This can be a good conversation starter — not as a judgement about the other person, but as an invitation: "This surprised me. Did yours surprise you?"