The Importance of Friendship
Although relationships with parents determine in large measure our longer-term preferences, attitudes and values, during adolescence it is often relationships with friends that cause most concern and which pre-occupy the thoughts of young people as they grow up.
Friendships are based on a completely different set of structural relationships to those with parents. They are more symmetrical and involve sharing and exchange. Friendships are important to young children but there is a change at the beginning of adolescence -- a move to intimacy that includes the development of a more exclusive focus, a willingness to talk about oneself and to share problems and advice. Friends tell one another just about everything that is going on in each other's lives...
Friendships can have a significant influence on one’s mind, body and spirit. Friends can help one celebrate good times and help comfort in bad. Having friends prevents one from being lonely, increases ones sense of belonging and purpose in life, can help to reduce stress, make one feel worthy and improves confidence in one’s self. Everyone can benefit from friendship.
Genuine friendship is rooted in virtue and common goals. As Graham Allan has commented on, when approaching the perception of friendship, we see our leading hitch is that there is an absence of firmly established and socially agreed standards for what makes a person a genuine friend. Depending on the settings, we may describe someone as a friend, or we may feel the label is not suitable. We may have a very slim understanding of what friendship requires. For instance, Bellah, taking from Aristotle, imply that there are three components to the customary idea of friendship: “Friends must enjoy each other’s company, they must have some usefulness for one another, and share a mutual vow to the good” (Bellah 115). In modern-day western societies,
During this period of time, parental influences often decrease as peer influences increase. This shift helps establish independence from their parents. Adolescents begin to assert more control over their decisions, emotion, and actions. These peer groups often provide adolescents with information about how the world operates outside of their family. Popularity, status, prestige, and acceptance are often reinforced by peer groups (APA, 2002). The nature of friendship changes over the course of adolescence. Younger adolescents may have one primary peer group with whom they identify. This group will usually consist of peers with similar interests, attitudes, and values (Broderick & Blewitt, 2010). There is a strong desire to conform and be accepted by peers. In middle adolescence, peer groups change and become more gender mixed. There is more tolerance of...
Human beings are designed to be social, it’s our nature. Starting at a young age we develop friendships. According to Webster dictionary, a friendship is, “The state of being friends; friendly relation, or attachment, to a person, or between persons.” Aristotle does into depth about why friendship is vital to human thriving, the true definition of friendship, as well as the different types of friendships that exist.
What is friendship? Friendship is known to be a relationship of mutual affection between people. Human interaction is crucial and is needed for survival, however developed friendships are essential and is linked to the success and wellbeing of any individual. There are different definitions and notions of the meaning of friendship and is all to do with what the individual themselves conceive it to be. There are different types and levels to friendships, for example acquaintances which is the basic and majority of the time is how friendships are formed and then may become deeper friendships. In terms of a child’s life they can meet an acquaintance at school.
According to a study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science journal, researchers have found that much of a young person’s personality is formed as early as first grade. It is fascinating how important these formative years are to a person’s future life. If our personality and perspective on life is formed by such a young age, it should then be understood that those people closest to us are the ones framing our perspective on life. These perspectives follow us throughout much of our adolescence and even into adulthood. How fitting it seems then, that the categories we find many of our friends fall into appear to be affected by the attention, or lack thereof, received at home at an early age. As I look back at my group of friends from high school, it is clear that we all had someone in our lives were trying to please. The only real difference appears to be the way we went about getting the approval we so desperately desired.
The issue that many adolescents face is the amount of time to spend with each person and when to spend that time with them. Many times, seeing friends outside of school can also be an issue for adolescents due to strict and overprotective parents, so for many, lunch time at school was the only opportunity that they could get. However, free time is limited in an institutional setting, forcing students to go through the pressure of having to choose between managing old friendships or spending time with new ones. As seen in the students at Raven Haven, this choice was one that required much thought as it could disrupt existing friendships. For example, Marina rarely socialized with her friends outside of school, knowingly angering Isabelle, while the other three would make an effort to do so (Amit-Talai, 244). As found throughout, Amit-Talai’s study, the organizational structure has the most impact on a friendship during the adolescent
Friendship expectations play a huge role in “establishing, maintaining, and terminating friendships” thus playing a factor of ones’ interpretations and through their affiliations (West & Turner, 2016). A companionship is dependent on
The Importance of Friendship
Friendship is a relationship that all the individuals can create by themselves. Though it is not a god gifted relationship like that of the relationship of a mother, father, sister, brother or any of the other family but still it is one of the best relations an individual can possess. People who have true friends consider themselves as the luckiest individuals on earth.
We do not make friends because they are useful but the bond of friendship, once it grows stronger and stronger has a number of positive aspects.