As parents, we often worry about our children’s friendships. We all want our children to have friends, to feel like they’re accepted and liked by their peers. This is especially the case as they mature into teens, and the social world of adolescence gets complicated and sometimes hurtful.
The stereotype of teen friendships, at least the ones that we see in movies, is that the teens that have a big group of friends seem to be the most accepted and thrive in social situations. New research, however, is showing that this may not really be the case. It offers insight into the role of teen different types of teen friendships on their mental health and overall acceptance.
What Research Tells Us About Teen Friendships
This study was fascinating because it contradicts what we often think about when we consider teen friendships. The popular stereotype is that teens who have a large circle of friends, who are accepted by many people, must be thriving both socially and mentally, emotionally. They seem to be liked by everyone, and always have someone to hang out with.
This study looked at how teens fare, in terms of mental health, over the course of years, even into adulthood. It considered the difference between:
- teens who had a large circle of friends and were accepted by many peers versus
- those teens who primarily had just one or two close friendships during the teen years
The findings were surprising. In essence, the study showed that teens who had a close friendship, starting at age 15, thrived in terms of their mental health, even into adulthood. This suggests that having at least one close friendship really serves as a protective factor for teens.
The teen years can often be tumultuous and full of change, and having just one close friendship seems to really be a buffer for many of the challenges that can come through these years.
In contrast, teens who had more overall peer acceptance, perhaps a larger group of friends, but not one that was particularly strong, did not have the same positive outcomes in terms of mental health. In fact, these teens tended to have higher levels of social anxiety over time, even though they were well accepted by their peers.
The scholars think that it may be that these teens are striving so hard to fit in and constantly find acceptance from this group of peers, that they don’t focus on forming a strong, close friendship with just one or two people. This constant focus on trying to be accepted into the group may be what is linked to higher social anxiety over time.
The Teen Shift to Prioritizing Peers
As we know, the teen years are a time of developmental transition. In terms of friendships, it’s developmentally typical for adolescents to start prioritizing their friendships with their peers over relationships with their family (to a degree). Of course, they still love and need their parents and family, but they’re looking for ways to be independent.
There’s a strong developmental urge to become a little bit more independent from parents, and to really prioritize those peer friendships. This is all part of the developmental task of adolescence, which is to expand their independence and prepare them for living a life independent of their nuclear family. This switch from an emphasis on family relationships to peer relationships can be challenging, especially if teens don’t feel like they have close friends.
This study clearly shows that it’s not the number or the wide range of friendships that matter, but rather the closeness of just a few really supportive friendships. This is really enlightening for most parents because we often get caught up into the idea that our teens should have this large group of friends, like we see in the movies. What this is really showing is that even just having one close supportive friend can make a huge difference in how teens navigate these tricky adolescent years.
