We’ve stopped talking to strangers. A 91-year-old shares why that’s a mistake.

“I love talking to folks! So many interesting people out there!” is one of the first things 91-year-old Edward Krauss says to me when I ask for his longevity advice. “You can meet lots of different people and sometimes they’ll rub off on you and you’re both better for it.”

I suspect he takes his own advice to heart, talking to a stranger at Silver Sneakers on Tuesday. And the one at the food pantry on Monday. And the store clerk on Thursday. Or the YMCA staff at the River Valley Regional YMCA in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, that very morning. And everyone else who crosses his path on a given week.

He was more than happy to share his life story—and then some—with me, a complete stranger. It turned into a wonderful conversation, in which he asked me follow-up questions, laughed at my jokes and his, and was always checking in to make sure I could hear him clearly over the video call. He was, in a word, delightful.

But he’s a rarity these days—not many people strike up conversations with strangers anymore. Instead, they turn to their devices to fill in those little gaps in everyday life.

“I see so many people glued to their phones, headphones on, and they don’t communicate with other people,” he says, adding philosophically, “Maybe that’s why so many people are depressed now.”

Chat with strangers for a potentially longer life

Talking to people is Edward’s form of entertainment. He does not own a smartphone—he cheerfully describes his phone as one that “sends smoke signals.” It’s for only texting and calling and he keeps it in his pocket for emergencies. He also doesn’t have a television.

Instead, he gets to know other people. But this habit doesn’t just keep him happy; it may also be one of the reasons he’s lived nearly a century.

In 2014, a landmark study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin looked at “social interactions with weak ties.” This includes the brief exchanges some of us treat as inconveniences, such as chatting with the person at the coffee counter, going to customer service, or even just giving a warm smile in passing. They found those interactions are meaningfully linked to happiness and a sense of belonging, even when those people remain strangers.

Happiness can affect overall health, which then influences the ability to live longer. When a large 2023 study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health looked at more than 28,000 older adults tracked over five years, researchers found that each increase in socializing frequency, for example socializing weekly instead of monthly, corresponded to a longer life.

But what if conversations are awkward?

Surprisingly, research indicates that all interactions with people, not just “positive” ones, can be meaningful.

Some experts tout the importance of everyday “friction.” It’s the idea that small challenges in life make you feel more present, encourage better relational skills, help you practice empathy, and build resiliency. This means that the frustrating call to customer service to return my Roomba was actually good for me, because a little frustration teaches us how to relate better to others.

The catch, of course, is that most of us have quietly engineered these potentially annoying interactions out of our lives. We use the self-checkout at the grocery store, wear headphones on the bus, text instead of call, scroll instead of look up, or tell the delivery driver to leave our food on the porch instead of going to a restaurant. Increasingly, we also pour our problems to an AI chatbot instead of opening up to other people. All of these missed interactions have consequences.

In 2023, the former U.S. surgeon general declared that loneliness and social isolation was a public health epidemic. Data published in 2025 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey News Release tells you why: Only 30% of Americans did any socializing at all on an average day…and two out of three of us don’t socialize at all on a normal day. That’s down from 38% just a decade earlier. That might be one of the most heartbreaking statistics I’ve ever read.

So Edward certainly has a point when he says, “Get out, this is what I tell people when they are feeling down about the state of the world. You need to get out and just interact with other people. You’ll feel better.” It’s the centenarian version of “go touch grass” (with a side of people).

A life built around others

Edward has purposefully incorporated opportunities for interactions with others into his daily life. Mondays he volunteers at the Towanda Area Christian Outreach Food Pantry. Silver Sneakers classes at the YMCA are on Tuesdays and Fridays. Wednesdays are for volunteering at faith-based Hezekiah’s Hands, where he hand-builds practical (yet beautiful) wheelchair ramps for homebound locals with the skills he learned after decades of working with his hands professionally. And services and ministry at his church, where he is a Eucharist minister, are sprinkled throughout the week.

This isn’t a new habit. He served as volunteer president of the food bank for 23 years. Before that, he spent 40 years doing volunteer construction and renovation for a local theater. For 17 years, he delivered Meals on Wheels, until the program was discontinued.

“You’re helping people with what you’re doing and also just by being there with them,” he says. “Even just socializing for a few minutes. It helps them.”

And it helps you, too.

That dual benefit to the giver and the receiver is well-documented in longevity research. A 2024 meta review of 28 separate systematic analyses found meaningful health benefits to volunteering including lower mortality, improved physical functioning, better quality of life, less depression, more purpose, and a greater feeling of connection.

And when Edward’s not out helping people? He’s at home with his favorite person in the world, his wife of 55 years, Barbara Krauss. They love to read in the evenings. Right now he’s working through a Sherlock Holmes novel, checked out from the library. On other nights, they do word searches.

He’s done so many he has opinions on quality. “Some are good,” he says. “Some are not good.”

His prescription for a happy life

“Forget the stupid TV,” Edward told me as his final piece of advice. “Talk on the cell phone but that’s it.”

The research, increasingly, agrees with him. Excessive screen time is associated with higher rates of anxiety and depression, disrupted sleep, and reduced physical activity—the very things Edward has avoided by filling his evenings with books and his days with people.

There is something that reads almost countercultural about a 91-year-old man who goes to the gym, builds wheelchair ramps, runs a food pantry, reads Sherlock Holmes at night, and thinks the most important health tip he can share is to go talk to someone you don’t know yet.

But it’s certainly working. He “wakes up happy every day” and his doctor, he told me with evident satisfaction, recently told him he’s doing “excellent.”

Indeed he is.