Do kids need a best friend?

Vox

2 days ago

is a senior correspondent for Vox, where she covers American family life, work, and education. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the New York Times. She is also the author of four novels, including the forthcoming Bog Queen, which you can preorder here
As important as best-friendships can be, they don't always last forever. Amr Bo Shanab via Getty Images/fStop
This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox's newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions.
Divya met her best friend when she was just 4 years old.
They've been through all the phases of childhood and adolescence together, and more than 14 years later, they're still incredibly close, Divya told me. They don't see each other every day, but whenever they get together, it's like no time has passed.
'Every time I look back to that particular friendship, I just feel amazed, and I feel like it's an achievement in itself,' the 19-year-old said.
Having a friend like Divya's can be a joy for kids, just as it can be for adults. 'We all would like to have somebody who is there for us through thick and thin, and who knows us deeply and loves us anyway,' said Eileen Kennedy-Moore, a clinical psychologist and host of the podcast Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic. Kids with best friends tend to be less anxious, better able to handle rejection and bullying, and even more engaged in school, Kennedy-Moore said.
But when I reached out to a group of contributors from the podcast This Teenage Life (Divya among them) to talk about friendship, one of the first topics that came up was pressure. Adults and other kids alike send the message that everyone needs a best friend, or that friendship should look a certain way, the teens told me. Even Divya gets worried sometimes when she sees other teens post on social media about talking to their best friends every day. She starts to worry: 'Are we even best friends or not?'
The good news is that kids don't need a certain kind of best-friendship, or even a best friend at all. 'What kids need is a repertoire of anchors,' people who 'hold you up, that are there for you,' said Michele Borba, an educational psychologist and author of the book Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Thrive. Maybe one friend is for sharing worries, and another is for sharing soccer games, and that's okay.
As Brin, 18, put it, 'not all friends can help with every single thing.'
Best friends are valuable — but not constant
Kids have preferences for one classmate over another as early as preschool, Kennedy-Moore said. They may even use the term 'best friend,' but they don't always understand its meaning the same way older kids do. My 2-year-old, for example, says that his left foot and right foot are best friends.
Real best-friendship starts a bit later, often by kindergarten or first grade, experts say. It's a common experience, but not universal — research has shown that about half of kids have a best friend who would also identify them as a best friend, Kennedy-Moore said.
Definitions have shifted with time, but today, a best friend is usually 'someone that you can trust will always be there for you, someone you can trust with your intimate secrets,' said Barry Schneider, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa who studies children's friendships. When teens talked to me about their best friends, many of them emphasized not just common interests, but mutual support: 'She was super helpful, and she was always there when I needed her,' Pratyusha, 18, said of one best friend from the past.
As important as best-friendships can be, they don't always last forever. In one study of seventh-grade best friends, only a quarter of best-friendships lasted until eighth grade, and only 1 percent all the way until senior year of high school, Kennedy-Moore said.
Kids also go through periods when they have a best friend and periods when they don't — in another study, two-thirds of fifth-graders had a best friend, leaving about 33 percent without. By sixth grade, the share of best-friendless kids had dropped to 17 percent. The kids who gained a best friend had become kinder and more helpful according to their peers, suggesting that building social skills can help children acquire a best friend, Kennedy-Moore has written.
As shifting as best-friendship can be, having that one super close relationship can have real benefits, experts say. Some research, for example, shows that having a best friend is protective against depression, Schneider said.
Brin, now 18, met their first best friend in day care, and they're still close today. 'This person is like a sibling to me,' Brin said. 'I know that no matter what, I can always go to them for help.'
The pressure to pair off
But the idea of best-friendship can also be stressful, teens say.
Brin remembers taking a mental health survey in elementary school that asked if they had a best friend in the school district. 'That made me feel so guilty for not feeling like I connected to anybody' within their school, Brin said.
'Our world is very set up for partners or couples,' Stella, 19, told me. Teens get the message that certain activities are for two — 'this is for you and a partner, or this is for you and a friend,' Brin said. 'It's always expected that you have somebody else with you, or else you're kind of weird, like going to the movies by yourself.'
Social media can amplify these pressures. Teens will hard-launch a best-friendship on Instagram just like people announce new relationships, Stella said. Some best friends will post about choosing their outfits together before going out. 'They will post aesthetic pictures, they will take trips,' Divya said. 'It does make me feel like, am I missing out?'
Best friends are not mandatory
Despite the messages kids get, experts say it's completely okay not to have one particular best friend. 'The best analogy is romantic relationships,' Kennedy-Moore said. 'Can you be happy single? Sure, absolutely, you can have other enriching relationships.'
It's important 'to break through all-or-nothing thinking about friendships,' she added. She sometimes talks with kids about tiers of friendship, from kids you talk with at the bus stop to soulmates who know everything about you. 'We might have a math class friend, or we might have a neighbor friend, or we might have a soccer friend, and all of these have value.'
For the teens who talked to me, having an official best friend was less important than having people to rely on. 'I don't necessarily feel like I had best friends this year,' Stella, a first-year college student, told me. 'But by the end of it, it was like, these are people that I feel like I can trust.'
'It doesn't really matter if you have the label of best friend, or if you're matching clothes or not, if you're wishing each other happy birthday or not on Instagram,' Medha, 15, told me. 'It just matters that you have someone to help you when you're feeling low, to congratulate you when you're feeling high, when you're very happy, and to keep motivating you all the time.'
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