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Divya met her best friend when she was only four years old.
They have been experiencing all stages of childhood and adolescence together, but more than 14 years later, they are still incredibly close, Divya told me. They don't see each other every day, but every time they get together, it doesn't seem to pass.
“Every time I look back at that particular friendship, I'm just amazed. I feel that it's an achievement in itself,” said the 19-year-old.
Having friends like Divya can be a joy for children just as much as adults. “We all want to have people there that are thick and thin for us that are there. Children ask Dr. FriendTastic. Children with best friends tend to have less anxiety, better dealing with rejection and bullying, and more engaged in school, Kennedy Moore said.
But when I contacted a group of contributors from a podcast This teenage life (Divia in it) One of the first topics that came up to talk about friendship was pressure. Adults and other children alike send a message that everyone needs a best friend or that friendship should look in a certain way, teens told me. Even Divya sometimes worries when you see other teens posting on social media about what they talk about on social media every day. She begins to worry: “Are we even best friends?”
The good news is that kids don't need a certain kind of best friendship, or any good friends at all. “What a child needs is an anchor's repertoire,” “Hold you, and that's there for you,” said Michele Bolva, an educational psychologist and book author. Sliver: Amazing reasons why some kids struggle and others thrive. Maybe one friend is about sharing their worries, another is about sharing a soccer game, and that's fine.
As 18-year-old Bryn said, “Not every friend can help everything.”
Best friends are valuable, but not constant
According to Kennedy-Moore, children have preferences over other classmates as early as kindergarten. They can also use the term “best friend,” but they don't always understand its meaning the same as older children. For example, my 2 year old says that his left and right legs are best friends.
Genuine best friendships often start with kindergarten or first grade and start a little later, experts say. It's a general experience, but not universal – studies show that about half of children have best friends. they As a close friend, Kennedy Moore said.
Although definitions change over time, today best friends usually say that they are “someone you can trust in your intimate secrets, someone you can trust in your intimate secrets.” When teens told me about their best friends, many of them emphasized mutual support as well as common interests.
It is possible that best friendships are important, but they do not always last forever. In one study of best friends in seventh grade, only a quarter of best friendships lasted through eighth grade, and only 1% until senior high school years, Kennedy Moore said.
Children also go through periods of time with best friends and not so. In another study, two-thirds of fifth graders had best friends, leaving around 33%. By sixth grade, Best Friendless children's share had dropped to 17%. Children who have acquired best friends are kind and kind, according to their peers, suggesting that building social skills helps children acquire best friends. Kennedy More writes.
Just as best friendships could shift, having that one ultra-close relationship can have a real advantage, experts say. For example, some studies have shown that having a best friend protects you from depression, Schneider said.
Bryn, now 18, met his first best friend at daycare, and today they are still close. “This guy is like a brother to me,” Brynn said. “I know that no matter what, I can always go and ask for help.”
But the idea of best friendship is also stressful, teens say.
Bryn remembers taking part in a mental health survey at primary school and asked if he had any best friends in the district. “It made me feel very guilty about not feeling connected to anyone within school,” Bryn said.
“Our world is very set for partners and couples,” Stella, 19, told me. Teens receive a message that a specific activity is two people. “Is this for you and your partner, or this for you and your friends,” Brynn said. “It's weird like you have someone else with you or otherwise you go to the movie yourself.”
Social media can amplify these pressures. Teens will launch their best friendship hard on Instagram just as people announce new relationships, Stella said. Some best friends post about choosing clothes together before going out. “They will post aesthetic photos and travel,” Divya said. “It makes me feel, am I missing it?”
Best friends are not required
Despite the messages kids get, experts say it's perfectly fine not having a particular best friend. “The best analogy is romantic relationships,” Kennedy Moore said. “Can you make singles happy? Certainly, absolutely, you can have other rich relationships.”
“It's important to break through all or nothing about friendship,” she added. She sometimes talks about the friendship layers from kids who talk at the bus stop, from soulmates you know everything about you. “We may have friends in our math class, we may have friends from our neighbors, we may have friends in soccer, but these are all worth it.”
For the teens who spoke to me, having an official best friend was less important than people could count on me. “I don't necessarily have a best friend this year,” university student Stella told me. “But by the end of it, it was like those people I feel I can trust.”
“It really doesn't matter whether you have a best friend label or clothes. “It's important that there are people who help you when you're feeling bad, when you feel high, when you're so happy, and when you're very happy, and there's someone who will help you to keep you motivated all the time.”
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One of the best parts of writing this newsletter is to hear directly from young people about their lives. If you are a teenager and you have something I want to cover here, or if you have something that makes an adult feel wrong about a child of your age all the time, feel free to contact anna.north@vox.com (if your parents are okay, of course). And, as always, thank you for writing to readers of all ages!
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