Friendship trajectories and health across the lifespan.

Abstract

Friends are a vital source of social relations throughout the lifespan and across developmental stages. Our knowledge of how friendships develop over time, especially from childhood through adulthood, is limited. Furthermore, it is now recognized that this specific type of relationship influences health across the life course in unique ways. Using the Convoy Model of Social Relations as a guiding framework, this study charts the multiple and unique trajectories of friendship across adulthood and tests whether these trajectories influence health differentially by age. The sample for the study consisted of 553 adults from the longitudinal Social Relations Study. Respondents ranged in age from 13 to 77 at Wave 1 (1992), and included only those who reported a best friend in each wave, that is, Wave 2 (2005) and Wave 3 (2015). Approximately 65% of the respondents were women, and 24.5% were people of color. Latent growth curve analysis identified three trajectories of the presence of friends in one’s network over time, two trajectories of positive friend quality, and three for negative quality. The most consistent findings are associated with positive friend relations over time. Gender was associated with friendship quality where women reported more positive friend relations over time, and increasing positive friend relations predicted better health 23 years later. These findings demonstrate that consistent and increasing positive friendships yield health benefits over time, whereas the presence of friends and negative quality does not have an effect. Overall, findings advance understanding of the long-term effects of social relations across the lifespan and life course.

The American Friendship Project: A report on the status and health of friendship in America

“…Yet, examining trends from the general social survey from 1970 to 2010, Fischer [ 16 ] concluded that Americans “were no more and no less likely to be friendless” and “had roughly the same median number of friends,” although he concedes that “recent cohorts may not have been as likely to have as many friends” (p. 60). Similarly, a recent report from Ajrouch et al [ 17 ] pushed back on the narrative that friendship network size declines with age. A reduction in the number of friends and discussion partners has been challenged [ 18 , 19 ], and may be a product of methodological artifacts [ 20 ], wherein how the data is collected (and questions framed) influenced estimates.…”