As many as possible - why is that? I'm very friendly I like to have more friends, for me I prefer to have a lot of friends
having long term friendships is a sign of having a healthy life,
When I was in highschool, 25-27 years ago
sports bars, we can go to talk, you go on thursdays
I can't relax
Yesterday I rested
in this stage
in my life,
Social circles were shrinking even before the pandemic. Here’s what the science says about
different groups of friends it's hard to not be in
the number of close friendships we should have.
touch with your friends
she's more focused on the kids
wrinkle
shrink = encogerse
they lose touch with
she tries to spend most of her energy with her kids
By Catherine Pearson
How Many Friends Do You Really Need?
An ongoing argument my husband and I have — which has become more
contentious during the pandemic — is about how many friends we should have.
people
it's something that
makes my life better
parenting = criando/siendo padres
We both have one or two close friends and siblings we like to spend time with. Plus,
we are busy parenting two young boys who sap most of our energy. As a textbook
introvert, this feels like plenty of friends to me. Excessive, even. But my husband is
an extrovert who comes alive around other people. As we slowly emerge from the
pandemic, I can feel him yearning for more.
anhelar
He’s not alone. For years, friendship in America has been in decline, a trend that
accelerated during the pandemic. Three decades ago, 3 percent of Americans told
Gallup pollsters they had no close friends; in 2021, an online poll put it at 12 percent.
About a year into the pandemic, 13 percent of women and 8 percent of men age 30 to
49 said they’d lost touch with most of their friends.
I think it's better to have friends
soledad
There are health implications to all of this. Friendship can be an important factor in
well-being, while loneliness and social isolation — distinct but related conditions —
can be associated with an increased risk for conditions like depression and anxiety or
heart disease and stroke. An often-cited 2010 meta-analysis led by Julianne I do
Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young they are unhappy about
not having friends
University in Utah, concluded that loneliness is as harmful to physical health as
smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
“It’s a natural question,” Dr. Holt-Lunstad said about the “ideal” number of friends.
“Just like we have guidelines and recommendations for the amount of sleep we get
and how physically active we are, this is health relevant.” to practice being comfortable by yourself
While she and other friendship researchers admit there aren’t many studies that have
specifically tackled the question of how many friends people should aim for, those
that have been done offer a range — and somewhere between three and six close
the whole experience is to go with someone,
friends may be the sweet spot.
punto medio
pending activities/ work to do
you are comfortable with people and by yourself
What does the research say?
If your goal is simply to mitigate the harmful impact loneliness can have on your
health, what matters most is having at least one important person in your life —
whether that’s a partner, a parent, a friend or someone else, said Jeffrey Hall, a
professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas.
buck = dolar/dinero
provecho
“Going from zero to one is where we get the most bang for your buck, so to speak,”
Dr. Hall said. “But if you want to have the most meaningful life, one where you feel
bonded and connected to others, more friends are better.”
The best-known theory of how many friends people can (though not necessarily
should) have comes from British psychologist and anthropologist Robin Dunbar.
What has come to be known as Dunbar’s number contends that humans are only
cognitively able to maintain about 150 connections at once (subsequent research has
put the number higher). That includes an inner circle of about five close friends,
followed by larger concentric circles of more casual types of friends.
Other estimates are in a similar ballpark. One 2016 study suggested people who have
six or more friends have improved health throughout their lives, while a 2020 study
by Suzanne Degges-White, professor and chair of the Counseling and Higher
Education department at Northern Illinois University, found that middle-aged
women who had three or more friends tended to have higher levels of overall life
satisfaction.
Those estimates seem to track with people’s sense of how many friends they should
be shooting for. Dr. Degges-White recently conducted a survey of 297 adults, which
has not been published or subject to peer review but found that 55 percent of
participants believed two to three close friends was ideal, while 31 percent thought
four to six was the goal.
But all of this can be really challenging to study, because friendship and intimacy are
subjective, and there isn’t a widely used scale researchers share to define those
concepts across studies. Closeness can be particularly squishy. Dr. Degges-White said
that to a certain extent it’s a case of: “In your heart, you know the difference.”
It’s also unclear how social media factors into all of this, as research suggests the size
of a person’s online network may not have any meaningful impact on their perceived
well-being. While many friendships have faded during the pandemic, many people
have found connection online.
How can you tell if you need more friends?
While friendship research offers some benchmarks, it may be more useful for most of
us to simply do a bit of soul-searching. Marisa Franco, a psychologist and author of
the forthcoming book “Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make
— and Keep — Friends,” recommends starting with a fairly obvious but powerful
question: Do I feel lonely?
“Loneliness is a sort of signal or alarm system,” Dr. Franco said. Everyone feels
lonely from time to time, but this is a deeper question about whether you regularly
feel left out or isolated. One recent survey suggested that roughly one in three
Americans have experienced “serious loneliness” during the pandemic.
It also helps to ask yourself if there are parts of your identity that feel restricted, Dr.
Franco said.
“Different people bring out different parts of us. So when you have a larger friend
group, you’re able to experience this side of yourself that loves golf, and this side of
yourself that loves cars, and this side of yourself that loves flowers,” she said. “If you
feel like your identity has sort of shrunk, or you’re not feeling quite like yourself, that
might indicate you need different types of friends,” she added.
Of course, making friends in adulthood isn’t always easy. Research shows people
struggle with it because they find it difficult to trust new people, and because they are
simply crunched for time. For those reasons, it is often easier to start by rekindling
old relationships that have fizzled, Dr. Franco said. Take initiative and don’t assume
that friendships just happen organically, she said. But be judicious. Spending time
with friends you feel ambivalent about — because they’re unreliable, critical,
competitive or any of the many reasons people get under our skin — can be bad for
your health.
The amount of time you actually spend with your friends matters, too. Dr. Hall’s
research suggests that on average, very close friendships tend to take around 200
hours to develop. Quantity and quality go hand-in-hand.
To a tired introvert like me, the effort that requires just sounds exhausting. Luckily,
Dr. Hall added that finding three to six friends “isn’t a magic number” for everyone.
“Your personality and the characteristics of your life are going to make a difference,”
he said.
So maybe my husband is right — when I am no longer consumed by pandemic
fatigue and child-rearing, I might kick myself for not having done more to build a
solid group of friends. But I’ve got time to bring up my numbers.
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