Being a teenager can be some of your most exciting years, but sometimes you’ll run out of ideas for fun things to do with friends for teenagers, so here are some suggestions to keep you entertained.
The best activities to do with friends are the ones that are more enjoyable as a group than doing them alone, and things that will help you bond with your friends and form closer bonds.
Sometimes, you just need to unwind after a long week and have some fun with friends!
Either way, here are some places to go with friends, and some fun things to do with friends at home, too. Let’s start with some things to do as a group…
Fun Things to do With a Group of Teenage Friends
Some of these fun things to do with teenage friends are also fun to do on your own, as well, but most of them are a lot more enjoyable with a group, whether it’s a small group or a larger group.
Host a Scavenger Hunt
We’ve talked about this idea a few times already on this site, but that’s because scavenger hunts are just really fun, and no two hunts have to be the same.
You can come up with so many different wild, wacky, and interesting challenges for your scavenger hunt, especially if everyone in the group brainstorms ideas together ahead of time.
It takes a bit of work and effort to host the scavenger hunt and to make it all come together smoothly, but it’s worth it.
This is something that can take anywhere from 45 minutes for a shorter scavenger hunt, or the better part of a day for a more complex one. A lot of the fun comes in planning ot and coming up with ideas, too, so it’s always cool to involve your friends in that.
After the hunt, you can grab a bite at a new restaurant that nobody has tried before, or do any number of these other activities to do with friends that we’re looking at today.
If you’re looking for fun things to do with friends at home, you can always have a scavenger hunt in your home, yard, and in the general area.
But if you’re looking for places to go with friends, scavenger hunts can take place throughout the neighborhood or even your entire city!
Go Camping/Backyard Camping
If your group of friends are old enough, you could look into renting a camping spot for a night or two and spending some time under the stars. It’s nice change of scenery, especially if you live in a city. It helps if someone in your group has a car or has their license and can borrow a parent’s car.
If you aren’t able to make it out to a campground, there are still plenty of activities to do with friends at home, like having a backyard camp out! All you need is a friend with a yard and enough tents to hold everyone. It’s not quite the same as camping in the wilderness, but on the plus side, you
Go For Coffee
If you’re not much of a coffee drinking, it can still be fun to try it when you’re a little younger. There are some concerns about young people having too much caffeine, but a regular coffee will have less than whatever the popular energy drink is at the moment, and a coffee here and there isn’t harmful for a teenager unless you have some type of sensitivities or allergies.
For to a little cafe can be a really fun way to spend an afternoon. They usually have really good baked treats or delicious sandwiches, and even if you’re not a huge fan of coffee on its own, you can always try a latte or another nice coffee-based drink.
Go on a Long Bike Ride
You can cover some serious ground on a bicycle, even when you’re going at a leisurely pace. Bike rides with friends are a blast, especially if you have a fun destination to get to.
Is there a nice park nearby that you could bike to? You can fill up a backpack with some snacks and drinks and spend the afternoon in the sun, or find a trail to ride on for more of an adventure. Wherever you end up riding, make sure you’re being safe and following all of the best practices for safe riding and generally just being safe about your surroundings, especially if you’re in an unfamiliar area.
If you don’t own a bike, or if any if your friends don’t own a bike, try to coordinate for somebody to lend them an extra bike. Go over it quickly to make sure all of the bolts are tight and that it’s in good working order, and everyone will have a great time.
You can also rent bikes in certain areas, especially if there’s a beach and a boardwalk nearby. Another idea, if nobody has a bike to lend and renting isn’t an option, is to start looking at garage sales a couple of weeks earlier and to see if you can find any used bikes for cheap.
Stargazing
You don’t even need a telescope to go stargazing, all you need is a clear sky during the night and somewhere that you can get a good view. In a city or a neighborhood, it can be a little harder to spot the sky because of all the lights and obstructions in view. You can escape this light pollution if you’re able to drive out into the country, or if you already live there!
Have you ever stopped to look up at the sky? Thanks to a number of different stargazing mobile apps, you can even get a helping hand to point out some of the notable constellations to look at, and to help you get the most out of the experience. Just search for things like stargazing, star map, star chart, etc and you’ll find some good free apps on iOs and Android alike.
Host a Taste Test: Fun Things to do With Friends at Home
Hosting a taste test can be a ton of fun! You can hit up the store and find as many different snacks or foods that are similar to one another, for example Coke and Pepsi is a classic taste test, but you could also do it with different brands of frozen pizzas, different brands of chocolate bars, and so on.
You could either do a test that’s simply to determine which one everybody prefers better, or you can make a challenge out of it to see if the taste-testers are able to guess which is which.
Not all taste tests have to be blind, it can also be fun to just try different versions of similar products, a lot of them at once, and to see which ones are your favorites.
Join a Flash Mob
You can check a site like Meetup to see if there are any flash mobs being organized in your area. Flash mobs were a huge viral sensation a few years ago, but they still take place every now and then, and some people have a great time organizing and participating in there.
Sometimes, a flash mob will require certain skills like everyone meeting in a busy food court and doing the same dance, or playing the same song, or singing, or acting in some strange way.
Have you ever seen a flash mob in real life? If you’ve never seen any of the flash mob videos, check them out on YouTube, maybe you’ll find some inspiration to join a flash mob of your own.
Cook a Fancy Dinner
If you love to cook, then you’re probably doing this every now and then anyways, but even if you aren’t an experienced cook, you can always learn to make something great with a bit of patience and a lot of YouTube videos!
“Fancy” means different things to different people, we’re just talking about something that goes a little above and beyond whatever you’re used to. Whether that means using fancier ingredients, or just cooking some pasta and sauce with veggies that you add to canned sauce, it’s all about putting in a little bit of extra effort for a great meal that you can look forward to.
Cooking a nice meal together is a great thing to do with friends, BUT if you’ve ever watched a competitive cooking show that has teams, you know that the stress of a kitchen can quickly come between even the closest of friends – so remember that it’s just for fun, and even if the meal doesn’t turn out perfect, it’s about the experience, passing some time, and having some fun stories to tell and reminisce about someday.
Make a Time Capsule
How cool would it be if you were just walking around with friends and you found a time capsule? Whether it was a random time capsule that somebody else made decades ago, or if you decide to make a time capsule and open it with the same group of friends in a specific amont of time, this is a great way to hav ea fun day while also creating something very special to enjoy i nthe future.
The first thing you’ll need to do is decide whether you want a time capsule for you and your friends to open, or a time capsule for some other group of people in the future to open.
If you decide to make a time capsule for yourselves to open, you’ll have to decide how soon you want to do it. It could be 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, or even longer. Just remember, even if it’s kind of sad to think about, teenage friendships don’t always last forever, but if everyone is serious and dedicated, you could make a pact to get together and open the time capsule no matter what. Even if it means people have to travel, you’ll all agree to make it happen, you’ll keep the date open no matter what happens.
Or, another option is to make a time capsule that represents a little slice in time of your generation, and save it for people to open in the future.
If people like you and your friends didn’t decide that making a time capsule is a fun idea of something to do with friends, then there would never have been time capsule for your generation to discover, nor will there be time capsules for future generations.
No pressure, but this is one of the more unique and fun things to do with friends at home.
Activities to do With Friends: Starting a Business
If you have some extra time with your friends, some sort of common interest (which you probably do, since you’re friends), and you want to make some cash while learning a variety of useful skills, then starting a business could be a great project.
There are so many different ways to make money as a teenager, and when you have some friends to help out, you can do some pretty amazing things! Even if it doesn’t work out, the experience you’ll gain from having a business fail leaves you in a much better position for your next venture to succeed as you learn from the mistakes.
So, if you’re someone who likes the idea of starting your own business and being your own boss, and working with your friends on something unique, then starting a business is one of the most productive activities for teenagers and an awesome thing to do with friends.
Start a Book Club
If you enjoy reading but you need an extra little push to keep on top of things, then joining or starting a book club can be a really fun activity to enjoy with some friends.
You can read some bestsellers, fantasy books for teens, or a bunch of different genres and authors out there. There are also online book clubs that you can join, with notes from past books, so you and your friends could even refer to those notes if you need any ideas of things to talk about.
It can help to have some prompts for a book club discussion, but it’s totally fine if you just want to wing it too, and use the book club as an excuse to get together with your friends.
Places to go With Friends: Volunteer Together
You and your friends, when you’re looking for fun things to do with friends for teenagers, could look for some teen volunteer opportunities in your neighborhood. There are all sorts of organizations that need a helping hand, whether it’s picking up trash from a local park or playing with animals at an adoption center.
In these lonely times for many folks, it can also be really kind to see if any senior homes in your area have some sort of zoom meeting program where you can offer some company to residents, which is especially nice for people who don’t have family members that visit them very often.
Learn First Aid
Okay, taking a First Aid course might not sound like the most fun thing you can do with a group of friends, but it can actually be a blast when you go for the training with a few of your friends. Otherwise, you may have to do this on your own for various things like necessary First Aid certification for certain jobs, or if you want to be a lifeguard, and so on.
If you already have your First Aid training and it’s recent, sometimes you’ll be able to skip this training through your school or through a job. Getting First Aid lessons with your pals is going to be more enjoyable than other options, but again, I’ll admit that this isn’t the most fun sounding thing on this list…
But sometimes, it’s the productive activities for teens that leave you feeling the most accomplished at the end of the day, and that’s always a nice feeling!
Do Some Good Deeds
Again, this one might not sound like the most fun on the surface, but some people’s reactions to being helped by a kind of group of teenagers is just so sweet and fulfilling.
Whether you’re helping pick up garbage in the community, picking a house in your area each week or to and helping them with some yard work, or whatever else you’re able to do with your friends to make yourselves useful, you’ll feel really good about it and interacting with the people you’ll meet can be plenty of fun in and of itself.
Try a New Restaurant
There must be some great restaurants near your home, right? Are there any within walking distance that you haven’t tried before? Maybe an entirely new type of cuisine that you have yet to taste? Save up a few bucks, grab a friend or two, and try somewhere you’ve never eaten before!
It’s kind of known in restaurants that teenagers don’t tip very well as a stereotype, because they don’t always have a lot of disposable income. If you’re planning a nice little restaurant trip, just make sure you have a few bucks leftover to leave on the table, even if it’s not a huge tip. If you’ve worked in the service industry, you probably already know this.
Go To An Escape Room
Most cities and even towns have escape rooms now, they’ve become incredibly popular in recent years. If not, find out where the nearest one is, and maybe make a trip out of it, stay for the day, do multiple rooms, and have a great time with your friends.
Escape Rooms come in all different themes and difficulties, so if you find something that appeals to your group, you’ll have a great time. Finding a highly rated room that’s well done can be such a blast!
More Fun Things to do With Friends for Teenagers to Pass the Time
Do you have any ideas for other things that you can do to pass the time with your friends? This big list of fun things to do with friends for teenagers has a lot of great ideas on it, but it would be impossible to include everything – so if you have any other ideas, make sure you leave a comment and we’ll add them to the list!
