If you want friends but do not know where to find them, you are asking the right question, because for adults, where you look matters as much as how you act once you get there. The trick is to choose settings that do the hard work for you, especially if social anxiety makes cold, open-ended socializing feel impossible.
Look for recurring, not one-off
The single most important feature to look for is recurrence. A one-time event puts you in a room of strangers you will never see again, which is both high pressure and low yield. A recurring activity puts you around the same people week after week, and familiarity does much of the work of friendship on its own. So favor the weekly class over the single workshop, the ongoing club over the one-off meetup, the regular volunteer shift over the occasional charity event. You are not looking for a magical night; you are planting yourself in soil where friendship can slowly grow. This kind of steady social contact supports wellbeing, which the American Psychological Association links to lower loneliness.
Choose shared activity over pure socializing
For anxious people, settings built around a shared activity are far kinder than settings built around talking. When there is something to do, a craft, a sport, a language, a cause, the activity carries the interaction, gives you natural things to say, and makes silences comfortable. Pure mingling events, where the only task is to make conversation, are the hardest possible arena and the last place a nervous person should start. Start where your hands or your attention are occupied and connection can form as a byproduct.
Some concrete places to look
Consider classes in something you want to learn, from pottery to a new language to a martial art. Consider volunteering for a cause you care about, which pairs you with kind people around shared purpose. Consider recreational sports leagues, choirs, hiking groups, book clubs, community gardens, or maker spaces. Consider groups organized around an identity or life stage that fits you. The specific activity matters less than that it recurs, involves doing something, and genuinely interests you, so you will keep going. Enjoyable activity is also good for mood, part of the self-care the National Institute of Mental Health describes.
Do not overlook the people already near you
New settings are not the only option. Friendship can also grow from people already in your orbit: a friendly colleague, a neighbor, an acquaintance from an old context, a friend of a friend. These come with the advantage of built-in repeated contact and some existing familiarity. Warming an acquaintance into a friend is often easier than starting from zero, and it only requires the same brave step of suggesting time together.
Give it time and repetition
Whatever you choose, go in with realistic expectations. You will probably not make a friend on the first visit, or the second. The magic is in returning, in becoming a familiar face, in the small accumulating interactions that eventually cross the line from acquaintance to friend. Most people quit too early, right before the familiarity that friendship needs has had time to build. Treat the first several visits as planting, not harvesting, and let repetition do its patient work.
Then take the small brave step
Finding the right room is half the battle; the other half is eventually making a bid, suggesting a coffee or joining the group that goes for food afterward. That reach is where acquaintances become friends. For the courage it takes, see how to make friends as an adult, and for the full method, Unjudged.