Do you really need to have any friends?
would it be better to have no friends at all? I sure hope not…
There are many great reasons to have friends in your life! Due to the research of some awesome Australian scientists, it looks like having friends helps keep you alive longer! They found that with older Australians, a strong network of friends increased their chances of survival and living longer lives, even more so than with connections to children and other family. This could be due to friends having more influence in your decisions and choices. Blood may be thicker than water, but it looks like we still need that wonderful friendship H2O so we can ride the great waterslide of life! It also seems that having more friends reduces your chances of making risky decisions in life. Looking at a recent study, researchers found that people tend to seek out money as a way to secure what they want out of the social system. They found that feeling lonely or socially rejected caused people to be more likely to choose riskier decisions in a gambling experiment.
That might work out fine if you get lucky and the risk pays off, but it’s probably better to not base financial decisions off of your emotions and rather use that sweet noggin of yours! So is there a number for the perfect amount of friends a person should have? It just so happens that there is a widely accepted amount of optimal friends, and it’s called the Dunbar Number The theory behind this number is that the average person can only have a maximum of about 150 friends. These are more casual friends who you don’t think of or see very much, but you'd still feel comfortable to invite them to a large event like a wedding.The theory is based off of looking at the average size of the human brain and comparing it to the size of other
primate’s brain size and the size of their social groups. It further states there are only about 5 close friends that you have a significant amount of contact with on a weekly basis and then 12-15 people that you are still very close to and trust. Obviously this just applies to humans, because I can be friends with every single one of you wonderful people! There’s always enough Blocko to go around! So are there ever any times when having friends isn’t awesome?
Well, it looks like having too many friends online and through social media might might not be the greatest.
A study showed that the more online friends a person has, the more stress they have. The researchers found that the more friends a person has on Facebook, the greater chance they have at offending people when they post things online. And this can lead to stress and anxiety, especially when people are virtual friends with their employers and parents. But online friends are still a great things to have! While there haven’t really been any studies comparing online friends to ones in real life, meeting friends online through venues like social media and online gaming are still important due to recent surveys. About 57% of teenagers have met a good friend online and around half of those teenagers made more than 5 new friends online. Online friends can be there for you in times you can’t meet anyone in person and can allow you to interact with people around the world! Online friends can be awesome, it just might not be the best idea to have too many friends, online or in real life. So what’s your favorite part about having friends? Do you prefer friends in real life or friends on the internet? Let me know in the comments below!