Why teenage friendships are so important

FRIDAY, Oct. 11, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Friendships formed during a person’s turbulent teenage years provide a critical foundation for their happiness later in life, a new study suggests.

According to researchers, being widely accepted by peers in early adolescence and forming close bonds in adulthood predict how well-adjusted a person will be as an adult.

“Friendships during adolescence provide young people with one of their first forays into consensual intimate relationships,” said researcher David Szwedo, associate professor of clinical and educational psychology at James Madison University.

“Because friends can come and go, friendships are a context in which adolescents must develop skills to maintain and grow the friendship or risk its loss,” he added in a press release. “These skills will likely be useful later in forming future friendships and longer-term romantic relationships.”

For this study, researchers surveyed 184 American students aged 13, 14, 17 and 18 to measure the quality of their friendships and their social acceptance.

The team then met with the group aged 28 to 30, asking them questions about their health, careers and personal lives.

Adults who believed their peers liked them as adolescents reported lower levels of anxiety and aggression, better physical health, more social connections, and greater satisfaction in their work and romantic lives.

The study also found that different types of friendship benefited people in early and late adolescence.

Younger adolescents who were more generally accepted by their peers had better well-being as adults, while older adolescents appeared to benefit more from developing close friendships with a few friends, the findings showed.

On the other hand, older adolescents do not appear to suffer from a lack of high levels of social acceptance that are important for younger adolescents, the researchers found.

“An adolescent’s perception of his or her social acceptance by peers during early adolescence is particularly influential in predicting adult well-being,” said lead researcher Emily Shah, a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas. “Conversely, in late adolescence, the quality of their more intimate friendships is more influential in predicting adult well-being.”

However, Shah added that teenagers who struggle to be accepted should not assume they are doomed to an unhappy adult life.

“I want teens to know that they are not alone,” she said in the press release. “It’s not easy being a teenager in this world, and I choose to believe that teenagers do the best they can with the skills they have. I hope that adults who interact with adolescents will consider sharing this perspective, to allow room for empathy and compassion.

The new study appears in the journal Frontiers in Developmental Psychology.

More information

The University of California, Berkeley, is focusing more on the importance of positive peer relationships among schoolchildren.

SOURCE: Borders, press release, October 11, 2024