Anyone who plays pickleball regularly knows that a lot more happens around the court than exercise.
Players arrive early and talk while they wait. Four people play, another group sits nearby, partners rotate, phone numbers get exchanged, and eventually someone organizes another game. Friendships that started with “Do you want to play one more?” can end up extending well beyond the court.
A recently published study put some numbers behind that familiar part of the sport.
The study, “Association of Pickleball Participation With Decreased Perceived Loneliness and Social Isolation: Results of a National Survey,” was published in the Journal of Primary Care & Community Health. It surveyed 825 U.S. adults age 50 and older. Researchers wanted to know whether people who currently played pickleball differed in reported loneliness and social connection from people who had never played and from people who had played pickleball in the past but no longer did.
What they found suggests that the social side of pickleball deserves considerably more attention.
How the Study Worked
The researchers divided participants into three groups:
- 415 people who had never played pickleball
- 144 people who had played previously but no longer played
- 266 current pickleball players
The average participant was about 61 years old. The survey was conducted online in July 2023 through a commercial survey panel. The researchers collected information about physical activity, health conditions, mobility, smoking, age, and sex—factors that could otherwise complicate the comparison between the groups.
That matters because current pickleball players might simply be healthier or more active than people who do not play. The researchers adjusted their analyses for age, sex, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease, osteoporosis, hypertension, stroke, arthritis, mobility-device use, and difficulty walking or climbing stairs.
They also did not ask people only whether they considered themselves lonely.
Loneliness was measured with a validated three-question scale that asks how often someone feels left out, isolated, or lacking companionship. For the study’s primary analysis, a participant was classified as lonely if they answered “some of the time” or “often” to any of those questions.
The researchers also looked at social connection in a more concrete way. They asked whether participants had made friends through any type of physical activity, how many connections they had made, and whether they socialized with those people outside of the activity. People who had ever played pickleball were also asked those questions specifically about connections made through pickleball.
That distinction matters.
Loneliness is the subjective feeling that something is missing socially. Social connection is more about the relationships and social engagements in someone’s life.
Pickleball participation was associated with differences in both.
The Loneliness Numbers
Across the entire study, 56.6 percent of participants met the study’s definition of loneliness.
Among current pickleball players, that number was 50.8 percent. It was 56.6 percent among people who had never played pickleball and 67.4 percent among people who had played previously but no longer played.
After adjusting for the health, activity, and demographic factors listed above, people who had never played pickleball had 53 percent higher odds of being classified as lonely than current players. Former players had 95 percent higher odds than current players.
That second finding is especially interesting.
There are several possible explanations. People who are naturally more social may be more likely to start and continue playing pickleball. Someone may have stopped playing because of health problems or life changes that also affected social connections. Personality differences could matter too, and the authors specifically noted that extraversion may influence both physical activity and well-being.
Still, the difference between current and former players raises an interesting question: what happens socially when someone leaves the game?
This study cannot answer that question. But it gives researchers a good reason to ask it.
Pickleball Was Also Connected With Making Friends
The social-connection findings may be even easier for players to recognize.
Current players were more likely than people who had never played pickleball to report making social connections through physical activity. After adjustment, current players had 4.42 times the odds of reporting that they had made social connections through physical activity, compared with people who had never played. Former players had 3.53 times the odds.
When researchers looked specifically at friendships created through pickleball, current players reported an adjusted average of 3.6 social connections from the sport. Former players reported 1.6.
There is something about pickleball’s structure that makes this plausible.
Doubles puts four people within a relatively small space. Games are short enough that partners and opponents can rotate frequently. Open play creates repeated contact with many of the same people. Unlike some forms of exercise, conversation does not have to be arranged separately from the activity.
A person can show up intending only to play and still end up interacting with a dozen people.
That is a different social environment from walking alone, working out independently at a gym, or exercising at home.
The Researchers Also Looked Beyond the Court
The researchers also wanted to know whether exercise friendships stayed at exercise.
People who had played pickleball, either currently or in the past, reported more social engagements outside physical activity than people who had never played. But the adjusted comparison was statistically significant for former players versus never-players, not for current players versus never-players.
Among connections made specifically through pickleball, current and former players reported similar amounts of socializing away from the game: an adjusted average of 1.7 and 1.5 engagements per month, respectively. That difference was not statistically significant.
That is still worth noticing.
Social connection created through a sport does not necessarily remain confined to the sport. The person standing across the net can eventually become the person someone meets for lunch, texts during the week, or sees at a birthday party.
For some players, pickleball becomes a ready-made social structure.
There is a place to go, a reason to show up, and people who expect to see them there.
What the Study Does Not Prove
This is where the findings need restraint.
The study found an association between current pickleball participation and lower reported loneliness. It did not prove that pickleball caused people to become less lonely.
Researchers surveyed people at one point in time. They did not assign people to begin playing pickleball and then follow them over time to see whether their loneliness changed.
The participants were recruited through an online survey panel, and the sample was predominantly non-Hispanic white. The researchers intentionally recruited roughly equal numbers of people who had ever played pickleball and people who had never played so they would have enough participants for the comparisons they wanted to make. This was not designed to estimate exactly what percentage of all U.S. adults over 50 play pickleball.
There were also important differences among the groups. Current players were younger on average, reported fewer health conditions, and had less difficulty walking or climbing stairs than people who had never played. Statistical adjustment helps account for such differences, but it cannot make observational groups identical.
Most importantly, researchers did not follow people before and after they started playing.
A prospective study that follows participants over time—and ideally a randomized trial when practical—would provide stronger evidence about whether the sport itself changes loneliness or social connection. The authors specifically called for future research of that kind.
Why This Matters for Players
The study is interesting partly because it measures something that rarely appears on a scoreboard.
Physical activity is often discussed in terms of cardiovascular fitness, strength, balance, weight, or injury prevention. Those things matter. But an activity that people actually enjoy enough to keep doing can provide something else.
It can give people somewhere to belong.
Of the 410 people in this study who had ever played pickleball, 65 percent were still playing. That continued participation matters because social relationships usually require repeated contact.
A weekly game can become three games a week. Familiar faces become partners. Partners become friends. Eventually, the sport itself may be only one part of the relationship.
That process is difficult to capture in a study, but this research suggests it is worth studying further.
Final Thoughts
Pickleball cannot be prescribed as a cure for loneliness based on this study, and the researchers did not claim that it could.
What they found was more measured and still meaningful: adults 50 and older who currently played pickleball had lower adjusted odds of meeting the study’s definition of loneliness than people who had never played or had played previously but stopped. They also reported more social connections through physical activity.
For players, perhaps the most interesting part is that the findings put numbers behind something the sport makes unusually easy to overlook.
The exercise happens during the game.
A great deal of the social value may happen between the games.
