If your teen or young adult struggles to make friends, keep them, or feel at ease in social situations, there's a good chance you've come across the term "PEERS" while researching options. It gets mentioned a lot, often without much explanation of what it actually is or whether it fits your situation. Here's a straightforward look at the program, who tends to benefit from it, what a first session actually looks like, and how to think about whether it's the right starting point.
What PEERS Actually Is
PEERS stands for the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relationship Skills. It's a social skills curriculum originally developed at UCLA and has since become one of the more widely used, research-backed approaches to teaching social competence to teens and young adults. Unlike a lot of "soft skills" coaching that leans on vague advice like "just be yourself" or "put yourself out there," PEERS is built around specific, teachable rules and steps for social situations — the kind of unwritten social knowledge that comes naturally to some people and doesn't to others.
It was originally developed with autistic teens and young adults in mind, but it's since been used more broadly with anyone who wants direct, structured instruction in social skills rather than trial and error. The underlying idea is simple: social skills are largely learnable, not fixed. Someone who struggles today with starting conversations or reading a room isn't stuck that way — they usually just haven't had the skill broken down and practiced in a structured way before.
Who Tends to Benefit From PEERS
PEERS isn't tied to one diagnosis, and you don't need a specific label to make use of it. In practice, it tends to help:
Teens and young adults with social anxiety who avoid social situations or freeze up in them
Autistic individuals and those with ADHD who want more explicit, structured practice with social skills
Young adults who feel like they're "missing something" socially compared to peers, even without a formal diagnosis
Anyone working on the specific skills involved in making friends, keeping them, and eventually dating
Young adults who had a solid social circle at one point — often in high school — and have since lost it after a move, a break, or a long stretch of isolation
If this sounds like it overlaps with what we've written about failure to launch, that's because it often does. Social confidence and the broader stall in adult milestones — school, work, independence — tend to show up together. A young adult who struggles socially often struggles to take the next step in other areas too, and the two get addressed together more often than not. It's rarely just one or the other.
Common Signs PEERS Might Be a Fit
A few patterns come up often enough that they're worth naming directly:
Spending most free time alone, not by clear preference but because reaching out feels hard or awkward
Having had friendships in the past that faded and not being sure how to rebuild that
Avoiding group settings, parties, or new social situations even when part of them wants to go
Struggling to tell when a conversation is going well versus when the other person has checked out
Getting stuck on the "logistics" of friendship — texting first, making plans, following up — even when the actual conversations go fine
None of these on their own mean PEERS is necessary. But when several show up together and have been persistent rather than situational, it's usually a sign that structured skill-building would help more than time alone will.
What the Curriculum Covers
PEERS breaks social skills down into concrete, learnable pieces rather than treating them as something you either have or don't. Topics typically include:
Conversational skills — how to start a conversation, keep it going, and exit it without it feeling abrupt or awkward
Reading social cues — picking up on body language, tone, and when a conversation or interaction has shifted
Handling conflict and rejection — dealing with teasing, being left out, rumors, and disagreements without escalating or withdrawing
Building and maintaining friendships — the ongoing work of staying in touch, making plans, and being a good friend over time
Organizing get-togethers — the practical steps of planning and hosting time with friends, which sounds simple but is a common sticking point for a lot of people
Dating and romantic relationships — recognizing interest, navigating early dating, and understanding boundaries (for older teens and young adults)
The point of breaking it down this way is that these are skills, not personality traits. They can be taught, practiced, and improved — which is different from just being told to "put yourself out there" and hoping it works. A lot of what feels like a personality trait ("I'm just not a social person") is often really a skill gap that's never been directly addressed.
What a First Session Actually Looks Like
Families often aren't sure what to expect walking in, so it's worth being specific. A first session typically starts with a conversation — not a test — about what's actually going on: what social situations feel hardest, what's been tried before, and what the teen or young adult themselves wants out of it (this matters, since motivation from the participant makes a real difference).
From there, sessions follow a consistent rhythm: a concept gets introduced clearly, it gets modeled or explained concretely so it's not abstract, and then it's practiced — often with feedback in the moment rather than just discussed after the fact. Homework or practice between sessions is typically part of it too, since the skills are meant to transfer into everyday situations, not just show up in the room.
How This Is Different From Therapy
It's worth being clear about what this is and isn't, because the two get confused often. PEERS-based coaching is skill-building, not therapy. It doesn't diagnose or treat anxiety, autism, ADHD, or any other clinical condition — it teaches and practices specific social skills. Therapy, by contrast, is generally focused on processing emotions, addressing underlying mental health conditions, and working through clinical symptoms.
If a teen or young adult is also managing a mental health condition, coaching works best alongside ongoing care from a licensed therapist, not as a replacement for it. Many families use both at once, each addressing a different piece — therapy handling the clinical side, coaching handling the practical, skills-based side. Neither one replaces the other, and that's by design.
Is PEERS the Right Starting Point?
Not every family needs the full structured curriculum right away — sometimes it's the right fit, and sometimes a broader coaching relationship makes more sense as a starting point, with social skills work folded in as needed based on what actually comes up. That's usually clearer after an actual conversation about what's going on day to day, rather than trying to figure it out from a description online.
If social situations have been consistently harder than they should be — for your teen, or for you as a parent watching them struggle — it's worth talking through whether PEERS-based coaching fits. You can reach out to StarPointe directly to talk it through, or read more about the PEERS coaching program here.
For young adults where dating specifically is the sticking point rather than friendships broadly, StarPointe's dating coaching builds on these same underlying skills in a more focused setting, once the broader social foundation is in place.