介绍:
Heyang: Have you reached your peak friendship? According to a new study, people will have the highest number of friends around the age of 25. But, these numbers begin to decline soon after, and men have more friends than women. Do you agree?
Guys, what did this study find?
Yu Yang: In the study published in Royal Society Open Science, researchers from Aalto and Oxford Universities analyzed the cell phone communications of 3.2 million users in Europe. The team looked at the calling patterns (excluding text messages) between pairs of people of known age and gender in 2007.
The Study found people have the highest number of connections at age 25. After 25, these acquaintances will decline steadily, and plateau from 45-55. Once a person reaches 55, friendships will begin to decrease steadily. While the study examined these relationships in a phone-based setting, the team says these findings correspond closely to face-to-face networks as well
Ryan: I think this makes sense to me. Because I feel once you’re hitting 25, you’re A “looking for serious relationships.” And everybody knows that’s once you’re in a relationship even if you try really hard, it is hard to keep those personal friendships you had when you were an individual. Maybe when you are a couple, those friendships won’t be as relevant anymore.
At the same time at 25, people are starting to get ready to pursue their work or career. They’re finishing school, life’s looking like a full time job. Basically, life is going to hell in a hand basket, folks. But pursuing a career that might even take you from a different part the country you are living in even to another country. When it’s long distance, it’s really hard to stay connected.
HY: That is so true when you talk about distance, it can kill a friendship. I’ve experienced it too. I went to college in the UK and I had my really tight and close circle of friends. But most of them live in London, and some are in Europe now, or actually scattered all around the globe. And not that many of these close friends of mine back then from college are in Beijing. I feel that friendships are a bit like flowers, just allow me to be little sentimental today, it suffers if you don’t sing to it. Now I feel the urge that I need to get back in touch with these friends.
As you make new friends, but shouldn’t it be in theory that once you start working, you are expanding your contact list. You are supposed to meet more people, but how come for most of us, it seems after college you just lose that big pool of candidates to become your friends. What happened there?
Yu Yang: I think it depends on the degree of maturity. As you grow older and maturer, I think you become more selective about your acquaintances. One typical scenario in China is after people get married and have kids, they spend most of their non-working hours with their family members instead of hanging out with friends. At least that is a typical scenario in China.
Ryan: For me, I would say, I don’t like to mix to often professional life with my real “me” life, you know? And so, I think that’s why we see a lot of people that have work acquaintances but then outside of work they leave work at the door as they are leaving the office and suddenly, I’m like, a whole different kind of Ryan.
Yu Yang: This study is based on a phone setting and I think people are using their phones to communicate with each other when they are young, people mostly communicating with peers of similar age.
Heyang: Ok, this is based on phone data and I felt that it is looking at people who are called “cavemen” or “cave-women” and I belong to that group, you guys, young and hip people, Ryan and Yu Yang, you don’t belong to this group. I feel…..ok you guys aren’t saying anything, you know, against me, to make me feel a little bit better in that context….anyways so I think this study, maybe that is a little bit biased.
Ryan: Well, first of all, the reason why I was taking my time there is because you called me young and hip, that was so nice of you.
Heyang: You’re welcome, we help each other out.
Ryan： But，you know, that was my thing, is this going to be relevant in the next 5 years, in the next 10 years? With communication now, we are looking at so many interesting things, like we were talking about VR the other day. Imagine if I just put on these goggles and I’m chilling in your house with you even though I’m half way across the world and there are these holograms now where a camera is looking at you and it projects your friend (Heyang: Yeah) next to you, it’s almost surreal, these people that are half way across the world can visually be in front of you in almost a 3 dimensional way. And so, actually, I feel like in the future, communication and friendships, relationships in general, will see a huge change.
Heyang: I think it’s really smart of you Ryan to say it’s a huge change, but you didn’t say it’s going to be a huge improvement because I think technology, it does help communication but whether it can facilitate more communication, is a bit of a question. As we have seen the popularity of Wechat in China, Weixin, everybody probably using it, whoever’s got a smart phone but has that made you have more friends or more contact with these people that you really care about, it’s a bit of a different question as I think we’ve been spoiled with these avenues of communication but if you don’t have the urge, that you really want to keep in touch with this person, it means nothing.
Ryan: At the same time, scary, I just want to point out that communication now seems to always put us in contact even when we want our privacy, so I love privacy.
Heyang: Yes, and I have tried so hard to guard my cave, not allowing people in.
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