Preschoolers already name friends three-quarters of the time
Friendship is mutual affection stronger than acquaintance—chosen time, enjoyed company, positive engagement. Children first track proximity and shared play; later they read snack-sharing and secret-sharing as friendship cues. Teachers and mothers report about 75 percent of preschoolers have at least one friend.
By fifth grade, 78 percent of children were named as friends by a classmate they also named, and 55 percent had a mutual best friend, while about 15 percent went at least six months without any mutual friend. Eileen Kennedy-Moore lists openness, similarity and shared fun as the ingredients of children's friendships, and, drawing on Robert Selman, traces stages from I Want It My Way to Friends Through Thick and Thin. Teenagers shift toward loyalty, shared values and interests rather than proximity and toys, and a large American study found that teens who avoided stealing, fighting and truancy tended to have friends who did well at school and avoided drinking.
Adult friendships bring companionship and emotional support and are tied to better mental and physical health, yet workplaces can make them hard, since competition encourages people to hide weaknesses. A 2023 Pew survey found 8 percent of respondents had no close friends and another 7 percent only one. Older adults tend to have fewer friends but greater satisfaction with them; Laura Carstensen's socioemotional selectivity theory says ageing shifts people from gathering information to protecting their emotions, so they keep only close bonds. Those ties are linked to slower cognitive decline and fewer hospital stays.
Making a friend takes roughly 20 to 60 hours of contact in the first weeks, and a close friend over a hundred. Most people underestimate how much others like them, a bias called the liking gap. Communications professor Jeffrey Hall identifies six unspoken expectations, including genuine liking, deep conversation, practical help and shared resources. Women on average prize emotional support and disclosure, while men lean toward friends who raise their status or offer physical help.
Aristotle sorted friendships into those based on pleasure, advantage and virtue. Endings can bring guilt, anger and depression, especially for children.
Source: Friendship
