Having friends has long-term health benefits.
KEY POINTS
- Scientists think that friendships have some evolutionary benefit for humans and even non-human animals.
- Close relationships help buffer the effects of stress on the body and the brain.
- Friends are important for children’s mental health and emotional development.
Some of the best days of my life were spent when I was in my 20s, mostly because it was when I met a lot of my lifelong friends. Graduate school was a particularly pivotal time. I was living in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I had just moved in with my boyfriend Nick for the first time. If that wasn’t exciting enough, we moved into a house next door to one of my best friends, and downstairs from one of my other besties. The two years I lived there were nothing short of magical: We were constantly surrounded by my favorite people, having dinner and drinks, and frequently laughing and dancing late into the night.
A lot of time has passed since then, with a lot of life transitions. Nick and I got married, and we now have two kids and live in New Jersey. My Charlottesville besties have also found their life partners—one still lives in Virginia with her partner and son, and the other lives with her partner near DC. We make sure to see each other three times a year, so often that our children sincerely believed they were cousins. We fondly call each one of these trips “Framily Vacation,” because family seems like a better analogy for our relationship than friends.
Family is obviously very important, but “framily” can be just as important or in some cases, even more important if you don’t have a lot of actual family around. But why are close friendships so important? And why do we need them in the first place?
There are many advantages to having friends
So many advantages that scientists have reasoned that friendships must have some evolutionary benefit for humans and even non-human animals. Although scientists don’t like to use the word “friend” when they talk about non-human animals, there is evidence that some species of non-human animals do indeed have “friends.” First, any pet owner knows that animals like having playmates. My 1-year-old lab, Mabel, loves to play more than anything (perhaps even more than eating), and she especially likes to play with other dogs that are most familiar to her. Play is quite common in many animal species, and in fact, there is evidence that playing with friends might help with brain development. Indeed, play is most prevalent among species with large brains, and the period where a species is most likely to play also happens to be the time when the largest amount of brain growth occurs (Denworth, 2020).
Playing or interacting with social partners not only has benefits for the brain, but it also seems to have benefits for long-term health. Research has shown that baboons, for example, particularly female baboons, live in communities with other females with whom they have close bonds. Importantly, female baboons who have close social relationships with other females tend to have children who are healthier and live longer than baboons who don’t have these close female friends (Silk and colleagues, 2009). And this isn’t just true of baboons. Many other animals live and migrate with close social companions, including elephants, whales, hyenas, and dolphins (Denworth 2020). And again, although some scientists are hesitant to call these “friends,” these “friends” are non-related companions with whom these animals have a long-term positive and cooperative relationship. What more could you want in a friend?
Besides the benefits of reproduction
Research also shows that close relationships help buffer the effects of stress on the body and the brain. When an adult is holding their romantic partner’s hand, they have a lower stress response in their brains when anticipating an unpleasant electric shock. The happier the couples said they were in their relationships, the more the partner’s hand lessened the brain’s response to the shock (Coan, Schaefer, and Davidson, 2006). Having a best friend seems to do the same thing, starting in adolescence. For example, one study found that according to 11- and 12-year-old children’s reports of their negative experiences, stress responses were lower during an unpleasant event when their best friends were present (Adams and colleagues, 2011).
Altogether, this work suggests that having friends around can be important for the body, the brain, and overall long-term health. Research has even shown that not having friends, or being socially isolated, can lead to a 26 to 32 percent increase in risk for premature death (Holt-Lunstad and colleagues, 2015). According to some reports, loneliness leads to the same risk of premature death as obesity and smoking (Holt-Lunstad and colleagues, 2015).
These days, when I’m watching my kids play with their friends, it’s immediately obvious how important these relationships are to them. Although some childhood friendships are transient, that does not diminish their importance for children’s mental health and emotional development. And friendships remain important throughout life. Research has shown that early in adulthood, often spouses become the most important social relationship in our lives. But as adults age, while this remains true for men, women are more likely to maintain their friends and build new ones over time (Kiecolt-Glaser and Newton, 2001).
My husband is still quite important to me, but relationships with my friends have become more and more important as I’ve gotten older. The older you get, the more complicated your life gets (at least it has for me) so it helps to have people around to talk to, to have fun with, and to share common experiences. Although this seems intuitive, the science agrees: Friendships make you happy, and the more friends you have the happier you tend to be (Denworth, 2020). As the song goes, make new friends and keep the old; your happiness may depend on it.
References
Adams, R. E., Santo, J. B., & Bukowski, W. M. (2011). The presence of a best friend buffers the effects of negative experiences. Developmental psychology, 47(6), 1786.
Coan, J. A., Schaefer, H. S., & Davidson, R. J. (2006). Lending a hand: Social regulation of the neural response to threat. Psychological science, 17(12), 1032-1039.
Denworth, L. (2020). Friendship: The evolution, biology and extraordinary power of life’s fundamental bond. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review. Perspectives on psychological science, 10(2), 227-237.
Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K., & Newton, T. L. (2001). Marriage and health: his and hers. Psychological bulletin, 127(4), 472.
Silk, J. B., Beehner, J. C., Bergman, T. J., Crockford, C., Engh, A. L., Moscovice, L. R., … & Cheney, D. L. (2009). The benefits of social capital: close social bonds among female baboons enhance offspring survival. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 276(1670), 3099-3104.