thesis on importance of friendship

The Importance of Friendship

Friendships are a crucial part of living a fulfilling life..

Posted July 26, 2021 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

• Friendship makes life more enjoyable and enriches one's everyday experiences.
• Finding friends can be challenging but can be often achieved by approaching others with mutual interests.
• The first criteria one should look for in a partner is someone who is ultimately a good friend to them.

As we move through life, we find that there are many things out of our control. We can’t choose our parents, our genetics , or control the things that happen in the world around us. One thing that we can control is who our friends are, and this decision can either make our lives so much richer and beautiful, or more stressful and disappointing. Today we’ll focus on how to choose friends who enrich our lives and make them more beautiful.

Why friends are so important

Having solid friendships is important for two main reasons. First, they make life more enjoyable. We get to share the beautiful aspects of life with people who we love, which can enrich our everyday experiences. Second, our friends help us through the difficult times. Having friends to support us through hard times can make unimaginably difficult situations seem more tolerable.

The most beautiful part about pouring our time and energy into friendships is that not only do friends help enrich our lives, but we enrich theirs too! Friendships get us through the tough times in life, make things more fun and enjoyable, and all-around make our lives better. I urge you to take stock of your friendships and ask yourself if your current friends people build you up and support you, or is the friendship more one-sided?

As we explore friendships today, these are also inclusive of our partners. I believe that the foundation for any healthy relationship is friendship. So it’s important to group our romantic partners into this conversation too.

So, where do we find friends? This might sound silly, but finding friends can be challenging! When I first moved to California for my Ph.D., I didn’t have any friends out here. There were quite a few people in my program that I enjoyed spending time with. But, towards the end of school, they became very busy and were no longer able to dedicate time to hang out anymore. Thankfully, through the help of a very good therapist, I learned that it was important to enjoy life instead of striving for excellence all of the time. As a result, I learned how important it was to carve out time in my life for friends.

Unfortunately, the people I had dedicated time to thus far were achievement-oriented and were pouring their time into work and not our friendships. This forced me to seek out other ways to form connections with people. I ended up finding a local hiking group with the hopes of meeting people with similar interests. During one of these hikes, I met Jim, one of my best friends to this day.

We became instant friends. We have continued to support each other over the years, and even more importantly, we always make time for one another. We both view the friendship as one that makes each other’s lives better, therefore it’s always worth the time and energy. The backbone of any successful friendship is one where both sides put in equal effort and support.

Both Jim and I were forced to put in more effort when he moved across the country to the East Coast. Because we already had such a strong foundation, this didn’t impact our friendship. We talk all of the time and see each other several times a year. We make the relationship a priority no matter what coast each other is on. Like anything in life that is valuable to us, we must work at it and put time and effort into it.

When it's time to move on from a friendship

The second part of the friendship discussion can be a difficult one — reassessing your current friendships and potentially moving on from friends who don’t add value to your life.

Two of my best friends from high school went down different paths from me. We still keep in contact, but I don’t spend too much time with them anymore. The supporting, loving part of our relationship wasn’t there anymore, so it was no longer worth putting energy into maintaining a friendship that had changed so much.

This may be a story you can relate to. What I hope you take away from this post is this — friendships take energy, time, and commitment. And if you’re putting your time and energy into someone who isn’t enriching your life and giving you the support you need, it may be time to reevaluate that friendship.

If you find yourself in the market for friends (who isn’t?) I recommend you find groups or activities that you genuinely enjoy. This way you’ll have the opportunity to connect with people who have similar interests. And once you’re there, take a risk! Talk to people, exchange contact information, and follow up with them. It may feel scary at first, but the reward outweighs the momentary uncomfortable feeling you may have.

Friendship and dating

In many ways, the most important friendship in our lives is the one we have with our romantic partners. The first criteria we should look for in this partner is someone who is ultimately a good friend to us, meaning that they are kind, positive, loving, and supportive. If we’re dating someone and they’re a jerk, it’s probably safe to assume that they’re not a good friend. To avoid this, I recommend seeking out someone who is a good friend first, i.e. before the romance and sexual stuff gets in the way.

When there are bumps in a friendship or a romantic relationship , it’s important to work through those tough times. The tricky part is that it will take two people to fix that issue. We can only control our actions and hold ourselves accountable, but we cannot control our friend or our partner's reaction. In addition to our own actions, we have control over the friends or partners that we choose in the first place. If we prioritize choosing good people who we can trust will work through issues with us, then we can work through anything.

Friendships are a crucial part of living a fulfilling life. It’s so important that we surround ourselves with people who we have fun with, who support us, and people who make us better. You may already have beautiful friendships in your life, but if you’re still in the market for friends, it’s never too late to cultivate new relationships that will make your life even more magnificent.

Robert Puff, Ph.D. , is host and producer of the Happiness Podcast, with over 16 million downloads.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Friendship importance around the world: links to cultural factors, health, and well-being.

• 1 Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States
• 2 Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States

Prioritizing friendship is associated with many health and well-being benefits. However, to date, there have been relatively few studies that have examined cultural moderators of the link between friendship and important outcomes. In other words, is prioritizing friendships more beneficial in some contexts than others? In the current study, we examined how culture- and country-level factors were associated with the importance people place on friendships and the benefits derived from this importance. The sample comprised of 323,200 participants ( M = 40.79 years, SD = 16.09 years) from 99 countries from the World Values Survey. Multilevel analyses revealed that women, people with higher levels of education, and people living in countries that are more economically equal and high in indulgence placed more value on friendships. Prioritizing friendships in life was associated with better health and well-being, but these associations depended on many cultural factors. The findings are discussed in the context of the ways in which friendships can enrich health and well-being across different settings.

Introduction

Friendships enrich our lives in many ways. Friends give us both practical and emotional support when we need it. As a result, there are many emotional and physical health benefits of friendships—the more people prioritize friendships, the happier and healthier they are. Moreover, broader cultural contexts can have large influences on how friendships function and are expressed. Therefore, the benefits that people accrue from friendships might also vary across cultures. In the current study, we examined how the importance people place on friendships varies across cultures and whether this variation is associated with differences in the health and well-being of the people living in those cultures.

The Role of Friendship in Health and Happiness

There is a reliable link between social support and mental and physical health across the lifespan ( Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010 , 2015 ; Holt-Lunstad, 2017 ), and one important source of support is our friends. Friends provide us with a strong sense of companionship, mitigate feelings of loneliness ( Lykes and Kemmelmeier, 2014 ), and contribute to our self-esteem and life satisfaction ( Goodwin and Hernandez Plaza, 2000 ; Chopik, 2017 ). Perceiving greater support from friends is associated with a greater sense of purpose and control over one’s life ( Veiel and Baumann, 1992 ; Leary et al., 1995 ). In terms of predicting health, friendship occasionally predicts health to an equivalent and, in some cases, larger degree compared to spousal and parent–child relationships ( Bearman and Moody, 2004 ; Giles et al., 2005 ; Christakis and Fowler, 2007 ). Friends also help individuals institute healthy behaviors in their own lives. For example, seeing a friend trying to lose weight is associated with an individual’s commitment to maintaining a healthy weight ( Wing and Jeffery, 1999 ; Gorin et al., 2005 ).

However, friendship is not universally good for individuals—depression and negative health behaviors can also spread through friend networks ( Smith and Christakis, 2008 ; Rosenquist et al., 2011 ). For instance, the risk of obesity, suicide, smoking, and other forms of substance abuse increase dramatically when surrounded by peers who are obese and/or suicidal, smoke, and abuse substances ( Urberg et al., 1997 ; Andrews, 2002 ; Bearman and Moody, 2004 ; Christakis and Fowler, 2007 ). In sum, friends play a significant role in people’s mental and physical well-being, for better and for worse. Nevertheless, the degree to which people value and benefit from friendship may differ across settings and cultures. In other words, different country-level factors might predict how much people value friendships and, in turn, the benefits that people obtain from friendships.

Do Friendships Vary Across Countries?

Some form of friendship is present in nearly all cultures and countries ( Cohen, 1966 ), but friendships are perceived and constructed differently across cultures ( Baumgarte, 2016 ). While some cultures employ a looser definition of friendship, others are stricter in the ways they define friendship ( Stewart and Bennett, 1991 ; Goodwin, 1999 ). Based on how people define friendship, there is accompanying variance in how many friends people have and what people expect from friends. For instance, a cross-national study in friendship found that Americans were more likely to have more friends and differentiate between friends; Ghanaians were more cautious toward friends and having a large group of friends ( Adams and Plaut, 2003 ). Likewise, people’s understanding of intimacy in friendship varies across cultures ( Keller, 2004a ). Compared to Chinese adolescents, Western adolescents emphasize more on relationship intimacy and quality interactions in their friendships ( Keller et al., 1998 ; Keller, 2004b ). In addition, friendships are more stable and fixed in some societies and more flexible and relationships of choice in other societies. In the latter case, relationships can change more rapidly as people have the freedom to voluntarily choose relationships (i.e., higher relational mobility). As a result, people tend to trust strangers more and are more proactive in maintaining friends, self-disclosing, and provide more support ( Schug et al., 2010 ; Thomson et al., 2018 ). These behaviors are characteristic of friendships in individualistic cultures, as individualistic cultures possess higher relational mobility ( Kito et al., 2017 ).

There are also several country-level (e.g., gross domestic product) and individual factors (e.g., gender) that might explain differences in how people define and value friendships and the benefits that people accrue from friendships. However, there have been almost no large-scale examinations of cross-cultural differences in friendship processes. As a result, in the present study, we took a largely exploratory approach to how country-level factors might alter whether people value friendships in their lives. Research has established different dimensions for social and cultural constructs. One such framework is Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, which consists of six national constructs through which countries organize themselves ( Hofstede et al., 2010 ). Although there are many dimensions on which cultures vary, we elected to focus primarily on the Hofstede dimensions given the great breadth of research on their links to health, well-being, and social behavior and characteristics identified in past research. However, we do run some supplementary analyses examining other taxonomies of cultural dimensions.

Below, we briefly discuss the concept of friendship importance and ways in which friendships might vary across country-level factors that have been traditionally studied by researchers (e.g., gross domestic product, income inequality, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions) and how these factors might influence the effects of friendships on health and well-being. Specifically, for each factor, we review its links with well-being and speculate how it might influence friendship importance and interact with friendship importance to predict well-being.

Friendship Importance

Previous studies have found that friends are important for personal well-being. However, there is little research that explicitly explores the effect of valuing friendship on important life outcomes, like well-being and life satisfaction. Instead, friendship researchers have examined the number of friends ( Ho, 2016 ), quality of friendship ( Demir et al., 2012 ), best friends ( Demir and Özdemir, 2010 ), and support from friends ( Secor et al., 2017 ). However, there is variation in how people define friendship, define closeness and support, and define what kind of friends they might have ( Miche et al., 2013 ; Baumgarte, 2016 ). Our study utilizes a different way of thinking about friendship—how much people value friendship (i.e., friendship importance). Values direct people’s thoughts and behaviors toward efforts that they consider important ( Kluckhohn, 1951 ; Rokeach, 1973 ; Schwartz, 1992 ), so this broad measure may capture people having good friends, receiving and giving social support to friends, and interacting with friends, but is not so specific that it would confuse people from different cultures.

People might devote more resources to their friends and have higher quality relationships if they value friends and find them important ( Roberts et al., 2005 ). Or people might find friends important because they have high quality relationship and their friends hold vital roles in their lives. Indeed, there is some evidence that when friendships are evaluated as important, people experience well-being benefits. For example, feeling committed to the role of being a friend is positively related to life satisfaction, even when controlling for ostensibly more detailed measures of social network involvement (e.g., support network density; Siebert et al., 1999 ). Thus, we are treating friendship importance—the degree to which people find friends important and value them—as a proxy for how much people investing in friendships and likely how good friendships are. However, we do acknowledge that specificity is lost in this trade-off for an increased understanding of the instrument across cultural settings. Although there are relatively few studies that investigated how valuing friendship might influence their behaviors and important life outcomes, a previous study using the World Values Survey found that friendship importance predicted better health and happiness while controlling for family importance ( Chopik, 2017 ). However, several country-level factors might predict how people value friendship and the extent to which friendship importance is associated with health and well-being. In the sections below, we provide a short introduction to the country-level factors that we focused on in the current study.

Gross Domestic Product

Gross domestic product (GDP) reflects a country’s economic status, and richer societies often have a higher GDP. With improvements in national GDP, citizens benefit from decreased child labor, lower rates of unemployment, increased school attendance, upgrades in transportation and healthcare services, and other improvements in infrastructure ( Moniruzzaman and Andersson, 2008 ; Muazzam and Nasrullah, 2011 ). Greater GDP is associated with country-level health indicators, including reductions in child and all-cause mortality rates ( Ward and Viner, 2017 ), as well as increases in the amount and variety of opportunities for individuals to attain their personal goals and pursue their interests ( Clark and Senik, 2011 ). Importantly, GDP is positively associated with life engagement, one of the indicators of subjective well-being ( Hill et al., 2019 ). On the one hand, because lower GDP often portends several life difficulties (e.g., health, quality of life of individuals from low-GDP countries may have more stressful relationships—an association often seen at the individual level with socioeconomic status; Veenstra, 2000 ). On the other hand, social networks are a protective factor against stress for people living in low- and middle-income countries ( Perkins et al., 2015 ). Therefore, we expect that lower GDP might be associated with people valuing friendships less. However, among people who do value friendship, lower GDP might have a less negative impact on life outcomes because valuing friendships might offset the negative effects of local economic conditions.

Income Inequality

The GINI index of income inequality measures a nation’s unequal distribution of wealth among its citizens ( Central Intelligence Agency, 2011 ). Overall, quality of life is higher in countries with lower levels of inequality: people are happier, more satisfied, and report greater purpose in life ( Oishi et al., 2011 ; Pickett and Wilkinson, 2015 ; Cheung, 2018 ; Hill et al., 2019 ). Income inequality is associated with increased all-cause and communicable disease mortality ( Ward and Viner, 2017 ). It may be that, in unequal societies where differences in social status, power, and wealth are more prominent and many social relations are vertical, people value horizontal relationships like friendship more for its focus on reciprocity and sharing ( Wilkinson, 1999 ). Alternatively, it could be the case that societies with more inequality value friendships less—the salient financial inequality might alter the things that people value in their lives (e.g., they might think it is more important to spend their time working harder to get ahead or meet people with a higher status rather than spend time with peers and friends). Nonetheless, like GDP, even under high income inequality, valuing friendships might buffer against the negative effects of income inequality on health and well-being via the benefits that people receive from friends’ support ( Wilkinson, 1999 ; Perkins et al., 2015 ).

Power Distance

The extent to which individuals with less power accept inequalities in control and influence, defined as a country’s power distance index (PDI), is associated with subjective well-being at a national level ( Ye et al., 2015 ; Karibayeva and Kunanbayeva, 2018 ). In close relationships, power differences between relational partners oftentimes predict commitment to a relationship, how they make decisions in various domains, and how they express dominance behaviors while interacting with each other ( Dunbar and Burgoon, 2005 ; Farrell et al., 2015 ). However, it is unclear whether PDI would predict how much people value friendships and whether PDI enhances or diminishing the positive effects of valuing friendships.

Individualism/Collectivism

Individualistic countries prefer the preservation and championing of individual freedoms and more diffuse social networks; collectivist countries prefer closely bonded social (often familial) networks and interpersonal harmony ( Hofstede, 1984 ; Triandis, 1995 ; Keller et al., 1998 ). As a result, people from individualistic cultures rated the lack of interaction with friends as their main source of loneliness, and people from collectivist cultures rated the poor quality of familial relationships and communication as the main sources of their loneliness ( Lykes and Kemmelmeier, 2014 ). However, this is not to say that collectivism would be linked with lower friendship importance. People from individualistic cultures tend to report having more friends, show less caution toward friends, and feel sorry for those without friends, which might imply a positive association between individualism and valuing friendships ( Adams, 2005 ). Although individualism/collectivism has been the most extensively studied cultural factor in friendship research, the number of studies is still small and these studies occasionally find no differences between individualistic and collectivistic cultures, especially after childhood (e.g., Keller et al., 1998 ). Further, research to date often compares how friendship processes differ between only two countries, ignoring the diversity of individualism/collectivism across other countries around the world and other factors beyond individualism/collectivism that might account for differences between two countries. Therefore, in the current study, we explore several countries that vary across the individualism/collectivism spectrum and examine its influence on the degree to which people value friendship and benefit from doing so.

Masculinity vs. Femininity

Masculinity corresponds to being more assertive, more interested in the acquisition of status and resources, and a lower focus on the care and affection of others ( Holleran et al., 1988 ). Assertiveness is a social skill that allows people to communicate directly with others about their desires ( Arrindell and Van der Ende, 1985 ) and indirectly leads to increases in subjective well-being and general positivity ( Argyle and Lu, 1990 ; Lauriola and Iani, 2017 ). However, assertiveness and masculinity are not exclusively beneficial for people’s health and well-being. For example, self-reliance and independence are associated with fewer medical checkups, which may translate into poorer health outcomes ( Calasanti, 2004 ; Springer and Mouzon, 2011 ). In the context of friendship, people in masculine societies might be more self-reliant and do not depend on or value friendships as much. Because there have been no large-scale comparisons of friendship processes between more masculine and feminine cultures, we did not make formal hypotheses about how masculinity/femininity would be associated with the importance people place on friendship.

Uncertainty Avoidance

Uncertainty and ambiguity in situations can be a source of stress and threat that impede people’s well-being ( Roll et al., 2015 ). At the country level, the Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) describes a country’s intolerance for uncertainty and instability ( Hofstede, 1984 ). Societies that tend to avoid uncertainty are characterized by more anxiety and aggression aimed at achieving stability and predictability in their society. On the one hand, higher levels of uncertainty avoidance may be associated with lower levels of health, happiness, and well-being due to countries having characteristically higher levels of anxiety ( Voshaar et al., 2015 ). Because friends provide support for individuals, valuing friendships may alleviate concerns about uncertainty by leading people to seek support from friends that may provide some certainty ( Hitlin and Piliavin, 2004 ). Therefore, high uncertainty avoidance may be associated with valuing friendships because they serve this comforting role. On the other hand, uncertainty avoidance could motivate a society toward investing in solutions and policies that introduce predictability and ultimately enrich people’s lives rather than leaving its citizens to be comforted by members of their social network. As a result, friendships might not be particularly important for or linked with UAI.

Long-Term Orientation

Long-term orientation refers to the set of beliefs and behaviors aimed at cultivating long-term desirable outcomes ( Hofstede, 2001 ). For example, people who endorse a long-term orientation are more willing to sacrifice current satisfaction and pleasure for long-term outcomes ( O’Keefe, 2002 ). Several studies suggest that resistance to consumption and valuing long-term goals lead to greater well-being among individuals and more sustainable societies ( Sheth et al., 2011 ; Chua et al., 2015 ). In addition, people are usually more willing to sacrifice for and cooperate with their friends when they expect reciprocity from their friends in the future ( Van Lange et al., 1997 ; Van Lange and Joireman, 2008 ). Maintaining long-term committed relationships strengthens physical and psychological well-being ( Dush and Amato, 2005 ; Loving and Slatcher, 2013 ). Given the long-term benefits of friendships, we might expect long-term orientation to be linked with placing higher importance in friendships.

Indulgence vs. Restraint

Indulgence refers to the extent to which societies allow for the gratification of basic and natural human desires ( Hofstede, 2011 ). A more indulgent society allows for free expression and engagement in these desires; a more restrained society imposes social norms as a means to restrict the gratification of these desires. Research in marketing suggests that indulgent consumption is one source from which people derive pleasure and happiness ( Haws and Poynor, 2008 ; Hagtvedt and Patrick, 2009 ). On the other hand, indulgence sometimes activates negative emotions, such as guilt and regret ( Kivetz and Simonson, 2002 ; Keinan et al., 2016 ). A country high in indulgence may encourage individuals to engage in pleasurable activities, which would result in reduced stress and better health ( Petersen et al., 2018 ). To our knowledge, no research to date has examined indulgence versus restraint predicting friendship characteristics. However, individuals who feel free to engage in pleasurable activities (i.e., in an indulgent society), like spending time with friends, might value and even benefit from friendships more.

The Current Study

The current study assessed the importance people place on friendships, health, happiness, and subjective well-being in a sample of 323,200 participants from 99 countries. We focused on two questions: first, which individual- and country-level factors are associated with variation in friendship importance across countries? Second, what individual and country-level factors might interact with friendship importance to predict health and well-being? Is valuing friendships particularly beneficial in some countries compared to others? Many of our questions were exploratory—little research existed to guide our hypotheses beyond a select few studies examining differences between individualistic and collectivistic countries and comparing two countries ( Keller et al., 1998 ; Kito, 2005 ; Lykes and Kemmelmeier, 2014 ; Baumgarte, 2016 ). The results from the current study can shed light on how cultural contexts affect friendships and the benefits that individuals accrue from them.

Materials and Methods

Participants and procedure.

Participants were 323,200 individuals (51.7% female) from the World Values Survey (WVS; see Inglehart et al., 2008 ). Since 1981, the WVS has interviewed representative national samples of several different countries all around the world. Information on publications, findings, methodology, and free data access are available at http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org . For the current study, data from waves 1 to 5 of the WVS were aggregated, and 99 different countries are represented in the current report (see Figure 1 for country coverage). Sample sizes ranged from 400 (Dominican Republic) to 15,088 (South Africa), with an average sample size of 3,265 ( SD = 2,479). The overall sample ranged in age from 15 to 99 ( M = 40.79 years, SD = 16.09 years); the median level of education was some secondary education. Each decade of life was well represented (e.g., 15–19 years: 17,139; 20–29 years: 79,948; 30–39 years: 71,689; 40–49 years: 59,919; 50–59 years: 44,318; 60–69 years: 30,889; 70 + years: 19,298); consistent demographic information on participants across cultures was limited to age, gender, and education.

Figure 1. Ratings of friendship importance from 99 countries.

Because we analyzed an existing data source, the Michigan State Institutional Review Board considered this research exempt from ethical oversight, as it did not constitute human subjects research (IRB# STUDY00002967).

Country-Level Characteristics

Country-level GDP per capita ( n = 93 countries had available data; Central Intelligence Agency, 2011 ) and the GINI index of income inequality ( n = 88 countries had available data; Central Intelligence Agency, 2011 ) were gathered as country-level characteristics that measure the economic conditions of a country.

Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural variation were also included in the analysis. Hofstede et al. (2010) suggest that country-level differences in societal values can be characterized by six dimensions.

Power Distance (PDI) measures the degree to which a culture is accepting of inequality. Individualism/collectivism (IDV) refers to the degree to which people prefer loosely knit social networks and individuality (individualism; higher values) versus tightly knit social networks and interdependence with others (collectivism; lower values). Masculinity/Femininity (MAS) assesses the degree to which a culture can be characterized by assertiveness and competitiveness (masculinity; higher values) or nurturance and cooperation (femininity; lower scores). Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) measures the degree to which a country’s citizens are uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity. Long-Term Orientation (LTO) assesses the outlook of a culture; countries with a long-term orientation place more importance on the future. Indulgence vs. restraint (IVR) refers to the degree to which a society allows free gratification of basic and natural human drives related to enjoyment of life (relative to a suppression of gratification of needs by strict social norms).

Scores on each of these dimensions were gathered from Hofstede’s latest reporting on cultural dimensions ( Hofstede et al., 2010 ). Country-level scores on all of the dimensions were available for 57 countries in the current analyses (and for a total of 83 and 85 countries for long-term orientation and indulgence vs. restraint, respectively).

Participants were asked to indicate how important friends were in their lives on a scale ranging from 1 ( very important ) to 4 ( not at all important ). Scores were recoded such that higher values reflected more importance placed on friendships. Worth noting, participants were asked about relational values only in waves 2–5. 1

Self-Rated Health

Health was assessed at each wave with a single item, “All in all, how would you describe your state of health these days?” Participants rated their health on a scale ranging from 1 ( very good ) to 4 ( poor ). Responses were reverse-scored so that higher values reflected better self-rated health. Numerous studies have shown that self-rated health measures are strong predictors of mortality ( Idler and Benyamini, 1997 ; Schnittker and Bacak, 2014 ).

Happiness and Subjective Well-Being

Happiness was measured with a single item, “Taking all things together, would you say you are…” Participants rated their happiness on a scale ranging from 1 ( very happy ) to 4 ( not at all happy ). Responses were reverse scored so that higher values reflected more happiness. Subjective well-being was measured with a single item, “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?” Participants responded to this item on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 ( completely dissatisfied ) to 10 ( completely satisfied ).

What Is Associated With Variation in Friendship Importance Across Countries?

Because respondents were nested within countries, a multilevel model predicting friendship importance was created, using the SPSS MIXED procedure ( Peugh and Enders, 2005 ). Participant age, participant gender (−1 = male, 1 = female), education, and country-level variables (i.e., GDP, GINI, PDI, IDV, MAS, UAI, LTO, IVR; see table notes) were entered as predictors of friendship importance across countries. 2 All continuous individual and country-level variables were grand-mean centered for these analyses. The country-level standing on friendship importance can be seen in Figure 1 . Results from this multilevel model are presented in Table 1 . Older adults valued friendship less compared to younger adults. Women, people with higher levels of education, and people from countries low in inequality and high in indulgence placed higher importance on friendship in their lives. GDP, power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation did not significantly predict friendship importance.

Table 1. Multilevel models predicting friendship values.

Do Individual- and Country-Level Constructs Moderate the Association Between Friendship Importance and Health, Happiness, and Subjective Well-Being? 3

Because respondents were nested within countries, three multilevel models (for health, happiness, and subjective well-being) were created, using the SPSS MIXED procedure ( Peugh and Enders, 2005 ). Participant age, participant gender (−1 = male, 1 = female), friendship importance, education, and country-level variables (i.e., GDP, GINI, PDI, IDV, MAS, UAI, LTO, IVR) were entered as predictors of each outcome across countries. 4 Further, all possible interactions between individual- and country-level variables with friendship importance were also modeled. All continuous individual and country-level variables were grand-mean centered for these analyses.

Results from these multilevel models are presented in Table 2 (for health), Table 3 (for happiness), and Table 4 (for subjective well-being).

Table 2. Multilevel models predicting health.

Table 3. Multilevel models predicting happiness.

Table 4. Multilevel models predicting subjective well-being.

Valuing friendship was associated with better health across cultures (see Table 2 ). People reported worse health if they were older, women, less educated, and from countries lower in GDP, lower in indulgence, and higher in uncertainty avoidance.

There were many instances in which the link between valuing friendship and health was moderated by individual- or country-level variables. Specifically, there were significant two-way interactions between friendship importance and age, gender, education, power distance, individualism, masculinity, and long-term orientation. The simple slopes of each of these effects on health at high (+1 SD ) and low friendship importance (−1 SD ) are presented in Table 5 . Friendship importance was more strongly related to health among older adults, women, people with less education, and people from countries higher in power distance, individualism, femininity, and long-term orientation.

Table 5. Analyses decomposing the effect of friendship importance at 1 SD above and below the mean of a moderator.

Valuing friendship was associated with greater happiness across cultures (see Table 3 ). People reported lower happiness if they were older, male, less educated, and from countries lower in GDP, higher in individualism, higher in uncertainty avoidance, more restrained, and higher in long-term orientation.

There were many instances in which the effects of friendship importance on happiness were moderated by individual- or country-level variables. Specifically, there were significant two-way interactions between friendship importance and age, gender, education, power distance, and individualism. The simple slopes of each of these effects on happiness at high (+1 SD ) and low friendship importance (−1 SD ) are presented in Table 5 . Friendship importance was more strongly related to happiness among older adults, women, people with less education, and people from countries higher in power distance and individualism.

Subjective Well-Being

Valuing friendship was associated with higher levels of subjective well-being across cultures (see Table 4 ). People reported lower subjective well-being if they were younger, male, less educated, and from countries lower in GDP, higher in inequality, higher in power distance, higher in individualism, higher in uncertainty avoidance, and higher in long-term orientation.

There were many instances in which the effects of friendship importance on subjective well-being were moderated by individual- or country-level variables. Specifically, there were significant two-way interactions between friendship importance and age, gender, education, inequality, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and indulgence. The simple slopes of each of these effects on subjective well-being at high (+1 SD ) and low friendship importance (−1 SD ) are presented in Table 5 . Friendship importance was more strongly related to subjective well-being among older adults, women, people with less education, and people from countries higher in inequality, individualism, uncertainty, in long-term orientation, and restraint. 5

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between country-level factors, valuing friendship, and people’s health, happiness, and subjective well-being. By analyzing data from the WVS, we captured a considerable number of individuals from a considerable number of countries from all around the world. The current report is the most comprehensive examination to date of how cultural factors affect the importance people place on friendships and how they benefit from them.

Older adults, women, people with higher levels of education, and people living in countries high in indulgence and lower income inequality placed a higher value on friendship. Several country-level factors—GDP, power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation—did not predict how much value people placed on friendship. Similar to previous work, placing importance on friendships was strongly associated with better health, greater happiness, and higher levels of subjective well-being. Several individual- and country-level factors interacted with friendship importance to predict each outcome. Across all the outcomes, friendship importance was more strongly related to health and happiness among older adults, women, people with lower levels of education, and people living in individualistic cultures. A few additional moderators were also present, suggesting greater effects of friendship importance on the outcomes in countries higher in power distance, femininity, uncertainty, restraint, and long-term orientation. However, these moderation effects were not as consistent across the outcomes.

Although we took a largely exploratory approach in the current study, our findings have the potential to create a great deal of discussion and future research about how friendships, and social relationships more generally, vary across cultures. Naturally, our findings have many implications for theories in social and relationship sciences, including those that make hypotheses about the formation and maintenance of relationships ( Rusbult, 1980 ), how the self varies across contexts—and the social implications of this variation ( Kitayama et al., 2018 ), how economic and external stressors affect opportunities and outcomes of relationships ( Ross et al., 2019 ), and even the social nature of emotions that can originate in friendships ( Larson et al., 1986 ; van Kleef et al., 2016 ). In the current study, we provided important, basic descriptive information about how much—and some specific ways in which—cultures vary in the importance they place on friendships. As a result, researchers can begin to create more formalized models for why friendships are influential for health and well-being and the conditions under which these associations can be maximized ( Hartup and Stevens, 1999 ; Sandstrom and Dunn, 2014 ). In the sections below, we provide a summary of our results, intentionally link the results to extant theory and research, and highlight the many remaining unknowns for how friendships—and the degree to which people value them—vary across cultures.

Do Friendships and the Effect of Friendships Vary Across Individual- and Country-Level Factors?

We found that several individual- and country-level factors were significantly associated with variation in friendship importance. Some of these factors also interacted with valuing friendships to predict health and well-being. Below, we focus on discussing the factors with significant interactions.

Individual-Level Factors

Across cultures, women experienced greater well-being benefits when they rated friendships as important. Women’s friendships often consist of more intense emotional sharing and self-disclosure behavior compared to men’s friendships, and men’s friendships often involve more group activities and fewer expressions of affection and support ( Wright, 1982 ). This may be why women value friendships more and yield greater benefits for their mental and physical well-being.

That older adults who valued friendships were happier suggests that placing high importance in social relationships can serve as a successful coping strategy that enhances well-being when encountering the adversity of older adulthood ( Keller and Wood, 1989 ; Dykstra, 1995 ; Hutchinson et al., 2008 ; Cornwell and Waite, 2009 ; Chopik, 2017 ). A great deal of work is dedicated to how older adults fulfill their need to connect with others, which is a critical factor for preventing loneliness at this age ( Charles, 2010 ; Masi et al., 2011 ). When older adults place low importance on friendship, they may be less likely to receive emotional and practical help from friends—leaving them exposed, with no buffers, to the negative emotions stemming from changes in their lives (e.g., declines in physical health). For younger adults, the contribution of friendship importance may not be as strong. Friendship importance may be less closely related to health and well-being given younger adults’ higher likelihood of deriving well-being from the achievement of information- and status-related goals in contrast to older adults’ focus on close relationships ( Luong et al., 2011 ).

People who reported higher levels of education were happier, healthier, and reported higher levels of subjective well-being. However, people with lower levels of education benefited the most from placing a high importance on friendships. In other words, friendship importance partially compensated for many negative consequences associated with lower levels of education. There are a few possible explanations for the role of friendship importance in buffering against the negative effects of lower education on an individual’s quality of life. For instance, friend networks might provide additional social resources to people with lower levels of education, possibly narrowing the inequalities between them and highly educated individuals ( Adler and Newman, 2002 ; Mirowsky and Ross, 2019 ).

Country-Level Factors

Valuing friendships was more strongly related to subjective well-being among people living in countries high in income inequality. Like the effects of education (for individuals), it could be that friendships buffer against negative societal pressures and conditions of living in a highly unequal society. However, ultimately, it is unclear why economic-related variables like education and income inequality modulate the benefits of social relationships on health and well-being. Future research can take a more holistic approach by examining the specific stressors that income inequality at the country-level causes for individuals and how friendship might ameliorate some of these stressors.

In general, we found that individualism predicted lower happiness and subjective well-being. However, placing higher importance on friendship was associated with particularly better health and happiness in countries high in individualism. Given that people from individualistic countries are more vulnerable to loneliness when they lack interactions with friends ( Lykes and Kemmelmeier, 2014 ), it is not surprising that our study found a stronger association between friendship importance and health and well-being. The social arrangement of collectivistic cultures promotes interdependence and cherishes the well-being of the group (over the individual), which may result in obtaining more benefits from kin networks. In individualistic cultures, people might receive these benefits more from friendship networks. However, people in more individualistic countries tend to maintain high mobility within interpersonal relationships, value self-dependence, keep more personal space, and maintain weaker social ties ( Markus and Kitayama, 1991 ; Trafimow et al., 1991 ; Kitayama et al., 1997 )—for these people, valuing friends seem to buffer against the negative link between individualism and happiness/well-being.

Consistent with previous research, we found that uncertainty was related to worse health, lower happiness, and lower subjective well-being ( Roll et al., 2015 ). However, friendship importance was more strongly related to subjective well-being in uncertain countries. Although country-level long-term orientation did not predict individual-level friendship importance, given that friends provide individuals with a sense of engagement and control over one’s life, valuing friendships still seems to buffer against the anxiety that arises from living in a country that is uncomfortable with uncertainty ( Veiel and Baumann, 1992 ; Leary et al., 1995 ). Interestingly, people who value friendships were particularly healthy in countries with a long-term orientation. Although we are speculating, a country’s long-term orientation may impede well-being because it drives the country to implement changes that may be beneficial in the future but may not always translate to immediate improvements in individuals’ lives. It could be that people who value friendships are less affected by this long-term focus at the expense of immediate benefits for individuals.

Finally, indulgence predicted higher levels of health, happiness, and subjective well-being. Further, valuing friendships was particularly important for well-being in countries where indulgence was low (and restraints were higher). This aligns with previous research in which indulgence can be a strategy for upregulating positive emotions and reducing stress ( Livingstone and Srivastava, 2012 ; Petersen et al., 2018 ). Friends are often a source of fun and pleasure, and among individuals who place importance on friends, they may yield more benefits in countries that are lower in indulgence. People living in countries higher in indulgence may not need to depend as closely on friendships to yield positive emotional benefits.

Limitations and Future Directions

The current study had many strengths, as it employed a large sample of people from several different to examine the roles of friendship and culture on health and well-being. Nevertheless, there are limitations that should be addressed.

First, although our large sample enabled us to detect small effects and estimate effects with greater precision, the question of whether the effects are practically meaningful for individuals’ lives is worthy of discussion ( Cohen, 1990 ; Funder and Ozer, 2019 ). This is especially the case for interactions between friendship importance and country-level factors, which tended to be the smallest in our study. Because this research was exploratory, it is possible that our large sample size resulted in some statistically significant—but not practically significant—findings. However, given that friendship was (and has been) an important predictor of health and well-being, it was important to examine how the contribution of friendship varied across different cultural contexts. In effect size terms, the differences between cultures were relatively small, suggesting that friendship is beneficial across many cultures. However, future work can examine the real-world significance of our effects, whether that be the effects of friendships interaction with a country’s economic or social standing or the number of years added to an individual’s life.

A second limitation was the way we assessed the importance of friendship and our outcome variables. More specifically, we used single-item indicators for most of our variables. Unfortunately, the WVS did not have any or sufficient information on the number of friends people had, the social activities they engaged in (and with whom), sufficient data on the amount of time spent with friends, or the actual quality of the participants’ friendships. Thus, we were only able to use a broad and crude indicator of friendship importance. Of course, knowing how much individuals think friendships are important is an informative measure—it likely gives some insight into how much they invest in the friendships in their lives. Further, more specific or nuanced measures [e.g., the number of “friends” (defined by participants) or quality of friendships] might differ according to individual-/country-level factors. Thus, a broader indicator of friendship investment with little ambiguity about its meaning may have been most appropriate for cross-cultural research. However, it would be important to have a multi-item indicator of friendship importance and directly compare it with other measures before making any conclusions. Future research should take a broader approach to the study of friendship by examining different measures of friendship investment and quality.

Related, the current study focused on a relatively narrow set of cultural indicators and did so in a largely exploratory fashion (see Footnote 3 for additional details). This approach also involved examining these cultural indicators at one static point in time. Worth noting, cultures and countries are not static entities and change considerably over time ( Varnum and Kitayama, 2011 ; Varnum and Grossmann, 2017 ). For example, there is a great deal of evidence suggesting global increases in and shifts toward greater individualism ( Grossmann and Varnum, 2015 ; Santos et al., 2017 ). Indeed, the relative weighting of the importance of friends versus family has even been considered to be at least a partial reflection of individualism ( Santos et al., 2017 ). We did model year of data collection as a covariate in Footnote 5, but even these analyses fail to capture the dynamic nature of cultures, and using just one index of individualism (i.e., the Hofstede dimensions, which have received a great deal of criticism; Triandis et al., 1988 ; Schwartz, 1990 ; Talhelm, 2019 ) limited our ability in this regard. Future research should more thoughtfully model how cultural characteristics—and their psychological and health consequences—change and evolve over historical time ( Chopik, 2020 ).

Finally, we hope that this report will provide useful information for other researchers in the formation of explicit hypotheses to test in future studies. Because of the lack of additional data available on valuing friendship and other potentially important variables, we were unable to test many of the mechanisms that we proposed might link friendship importance to health and well-being in certain cultures. For some cultures, valuing friendship might entail the exchange of instrumental support, which leads to better outcomes; for other cultures, it might entail the exchange of emotional support, which leads to better outcomes ( Wilson et al., 1999 ; Merz and Huxhold, 2010 ; Rook, 2015 ). Further, these varying mechanisms might be dampened or enhanced based on additional cultural factors. Future researchers can use our preliminary findings to investigate why valuing friendships are associated with better outcomes in different contexts.

In pursuing these questions for future research, we would also like to advocate for methods and approaches that reduce researchers’ degrees of freedom when examining cultural differences in relational and psychosocial characteristics ( Simmons et al., 2011 ; Roberts, 2015 ; Milfont and Klein, 2018 ; Vazire, 2018 ). This is especially true when approaching questions in such an exploratory way that we did here. For example, variation in the selection of cultural characteristics, variables measured or made available, analytic models, and interpretation criteria—many of which are arbitrary—can contribute to compromised reproduction of cultural differences that might undermine the science of cultural and relational differences. Unfortunately, we did not engage in these efforts in the current study but encourage others to do so. To this end, for both existing data sets and novel data collection efforts, preregistration and upfront justifications of these decision points can make for a more reproducible understanding of cultural differences in relational behavior ( LeBel et al., 2017 ; Milfont and Klein, 2018 ; Haven and Van Grootel, 2019 ; Weston et al., 2019 ).

This study examined the effects of valuing friendships on people’s health, happiness, and well-being among 323,200 individuals from 99 different countries around the world. The current study is the most comprehensive and diverse examination of friendships on health and well-being to date. Our findings suggest that valuing friendships is generally associated with better health, well-being, and happiness. In many cases, placing a high value on friendship was particularly important for health and well-being in settings typically associated with lower well-being (e.g., countries high in income inequality and individualism). Our findings highlight the importance of considering not only how much people value friendships but also the situating social relationships within broader individual and cultural contexts.

Data Availability Statement

Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: Data from the World Values Survey is publicly available for researchers. The study can be accessed via http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp .

Ethics Statement

The analyses reported in this manuscript were deemed exempt from ethical oversight as it did not constitute the traditional type of human subjects research (MSU IRB#STUDY00002967).

Author Contributions

PL and WC conceived the study. WC analyzed the data and created the tables and figures. PL, JO, KL, and WC drafted the manuscript and provided critical edits. All the authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Sam Warshaw for comments on a previous draft of this manuscript.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.570839/full#supplementary-material

• ^ There are two additional items available in the WVS pertaining to friendships. One question was about living up to expectations put on individuals by friends (“Do you agree that you make a lot of effort to live up to what your friends expect?;” available for 59% of the sample) and a question about how often people spent time with friends (available for 17% of the sample). Because the former question is relatively ambiguous in its measurement (e.g., is it measuring a form of peer pressure, self-imposed pressure, or effort to invest in friendships), we ultimately decided not to include it in the current report. The latter question was available for too few people and countries that we elected to not include it here. However, in the interest of transparency, we are disclosing that these additional items related to friendships exist in the WVS.
• ^ Because many cultural indicators are often correlated with one another, we examined if any of the correlations between cultural variables were problematic and should not be entered simultaneously into the model. We found a strong negative correlation between power distance and individualism ( r = −0.68). Upon running models sequentially, alternating the exclusion of these two variables, we found that the results did not differ at all, so we elected to include all of the variables in the model simultaneously.
• ^ There is seemingly an infinite number of variables on which cultures may differ. To reasonably present the main ways in which cultural variables might affect friendship importance, we focused on the Hofstede dimensions as they have been most clearly linked to cross-cultural variation in health and well-being and, to a degree, friendships. Nevertheless, there are many other taxonomies that could be chosen. Given reviewer feedback, we ran additional analyses predicting variation in friendship importance from social axiom characteristics (n = 37 countries available that overlapped with our current sample; Leung and Bond, 2004 ), self-construal (n = 28; Vignoles et al., 2016 ), relational mobility (n = 37; Thomson et al., 2018 ), Schwartz values (n = 63; Schwartz, 2006 ), GLOBE characteristics (n = 51; House et al., 2004 ), looseness–tightness (n = 27; Gelfand et al., 2011 ), human development (n = 94; UNDP, 2019a ), population density (n = 94; UNDP, 2019b ), and pathogen prevalence (n = 96; Murray and Schaller, 2010 ). The vast majority of these characteristics did not predict variation in friendship importance when tested in separate models: most social axioms ( p s > 0.112), most forms of self-construal ( p s > 0.092), relational mobility ( p = 0.788), Schwartz values ( p s > 0.06), GLOBE characteristics ( p s > 0.08), looseness–tightness ( p s = 0.629), human development ( p = 0.440), population density ( p = 0.440), and pathogen prevalence ( p = 0.676). The two exceptions were that people from countries higher in social complexity (a social axiom; r = 0.525, p = 0.002) and countries higher in self-direction (a self-construal dimension; r = 0.43, p = 0.043) reported placing higher importance on friendships. We urge caution in interpreting these effects as there were relatively few countries available for the social axiom and self-construal analyses. The results are reported in Supplementary Tables 1–9 .
• ^ Based on the recommendation of a reviewer, we examined the effects of cultural differences in response styles for our substantive results examining each outcome. Although it is difficult to conduct many formal examinations of response styles given our use of single-item indicators, we did run a number of supplementary analyses examining the impact of acquiescence on attenuating the results reported here. Following the recommended procedures ( van Herk et al., 2004 ; Harzing, 2006 ), we calculated the proportion of individuals responding with extreme values [i.e., either 1 (for disacquiescence) or 4 (for acquiescence)] on our measure of friendship importance. The average acquiescence balance (acquiescence minus disacquiescence) for each country was used as a measure of acquiescence bias. This country level score ranged from 18.7 to 78.2% ( M = 43.10, SD = 14.50). Entering acquiescence bias as a covariate in each model did not change the results in any way (i.e., there were minor/small variations in the estimates but none that changed the significance or interpretation of the effects). This could be partially due to acquiescence biases being largely unrelated to happiness ( p = 0.28) and subjective well-being ( p = 0.81). Acquiescence bias was associated with physical health ( t = 2.58, p = 0.01) such that countries choosing more extreme values on the friendship variable reported better health. However, even in the context of this significant effect, the other main effects and interactions were the same in their significance and interpretation. Although we were limited in the degree to which we could assess the effects of response style biases, we encourage future researchers to more formally examine sources of this variation and how this variation might affect conclusions about cultural differences in social and psychological constructs.
• ^ A helpful reviewer suggested that we take advantage of the multiwave assessments and large sample size of the WVS. Specifically, we controlled for wave of data collection and found that people in more recent waves valued friendships more (linear effect of wave; r = 0.035, p < 0.001), were healthier ( r = 0.068, p < 0.001), were happier ( r = 0.066, p < 0.001), and reported higher life satisfaction ( r = 0.057, p < 0.001); none of our substantive findings changed (although some marginally significant effects became non-significant). They also recommended that we use a cross-validation approach in which the data set is split in half to see how reliable the findings were ( Weston et al., 2019 ). Although this was suggested after the main analyses were already done, we still thought it was a good idea and provide some test of how robust the findings are. Thus, we split the sample in half and re-ran all of our analyses on both halves. We found the results from Table 1 , were reproduced across the two smaller halves. For the analyses in Tables 2 – 4 , most of the moderation effects were reproduced across the analyses, with just a few exceptions, specifically, the power distance and long-term orientation moderation effects (for health), the power distance moderation effect (for happiness), and the long-term orientation moderation effect (for subjective well-being). Thus, these particular moderation effects should be viewed with some skepticism given that they were not reproduced across the two random halves of the data set.

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Keywords : friendship, collectivism/individualism, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, health, happiness, World Values Survey (WVS)

Citation: Lu P, Oh J, Leahy KE and Chopik WJ (2021) Friendship Importance Around the World: Links to Cultural Factors, Health, and Well-Being. Front. Psychol. 11:570839. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.570839

Received: 09 June 2020; Accepted: 23 November 2020; Published: 18 January 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Lu, Oh, Leahy and Chopik. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: William J. Chopik, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

The science of why friendships keep us healthy

American culture prioritizes romance, but psychological science is exploring the human need for platonic relationships and the specific ways in which they bolster well-being

Vol. 54 No. 4 Print version: page 42

• Health and Behavior

American culture places a high premium on romantic love. In fact, relationship woes—or the lack thereof—are among the top reasons people seek therapy. And while romance can be a meaningful part of life, the benefits of friendships should not be overlooked. Psychological research suggests that stable, healthy friendships are crucial for our well-being and longevity.

People who have friends and close confidants are more satisfied with their lives and less likely to suffer from depression ( Choi, K. W., et al., The American Journal of Psychiatry , Vol. 177, No. 10, 2020 ). They’re also less likely to die from all causes, including heart problems and a range of chronic diseases ( Holt-Lunstad, J., et al., PLOS Medicine , Vol. 7, No. 7, 2010 ; Steptoe, A., et al., PNAS , Vol. 110, No. 15, 2013 ).

“On the other hand, when people are low in social connection—because of isolation, loneliness, or poor-quality relationships—they face an increased risk of premature death,” said Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University who studies how relationships affect the body and brain.

Fortunately, research also suggests that friendships can be made and maintained at any age, relationships with friends can strengthen or stand in for romantic relationships, and even minimal social interactions can be powerful.

[ Related: Conversations are powerful. Here are ways to embrace the awkward and deepen relationships ]

“Friendship is something we really need to understand. There’s been this preoccupation with romantic relationships, but many of our close relationships are with friends,” said Thalia Wheatley, PhD, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College who studies social connectivity. “So how do they impact our health?”

How friendship changes the body and brain

Psychological research from around the world shows that having social connections is one of the most reliable predictors of a long, healthy, and satisfying life.

A review of 38 studies found that adult friendships, especially high-quality ones that provide social support and companionship, significantly predict well-being and can protect against mental health issues such as depression and anxiety—and those benefits persist across the life span ( Pezirkianidis, C., et al., Frontiers in Psychology , Vol. 14, 2023 ; Blieszner, R., et al., Innovation in Aging , Vol. 3, No. 1, 2019 ). People with no friends or poor-quality friendships are twice as likely to die prematurely, according to Holt-Lunstad’s meta-analysis of more than 308,000 people—a risk factor even greater than the effects of smoking 20 cigarettes per day ( PLOS Medicine , Vol. 7, No. 7, 2010 ).

“In the face of life’s challenges, having a close friend to turn to seems to be a buffer or protective factor against some of the negative outcomes we might otherwise see,” said Catherine Bagwell, PhD, a professor of psychology at Davidson College in North Carolina.

Friendships protect us in part by changing the way we respond to stress. Blood pressure reactivity is lower when people talk to a supportive friend rather than a friend whom they feel ambivalent about ( Holt-Lunstad, J., et al., Annals of Behavioral Medicine , Vol. 33, No. 3, 2007 ). Participants who have a friend by their side while completing a tough task have less heart rate reactivity than those working alone ( Kamarck, T. W., et al., Psychosomatic Medicine , Vol. 52, No. 1, 1990 ). In one study, people even judged a hill to be less steep when they were accompanied by a friend ( Schnall, S., et al., Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , Vol. 44, No. 5, 2008 ).

Scientists studying friendship have even found similar brain activity among friends in regions responsible for a range of functions, including motivation, reward, identity, and sensory processing ( Güroğlu, B., Child Development Perspectives , Vol. 16, No. 2, 2022 ). When Wheatley and her colleagues collected fMRI data on people in a social network, closer friends had more similar brain activity when watching a series of video clips ( Nature Communications , Vol. 9, 2018 ). In another study, currently under review, she and her colleagues can even begin to predict whether first-year MBA students at Dartmouth will later become friends based solely on their neural patterns.

“The big surprise here is that the similarities are all over the brain, including regions that control how we direct our attention, how we think about things, and even what we’re looking at,” Wheatley said.

The risks of social isolation

On the other side of the coin, research has shown that loneliness—among people who lack quality friendships, romantic partnerships, or other relationships—increases our risk for heart attack, stroke, and premature death, according to a longitudinal study of nearly 480,000 U.K. residents ( Hakulinen, C., et al., Heart , Vol. 104, No. 18, 2018 ). A meta-analysis by Holt-Lunstad estimates that loneliness increases the risk of early death as much as 26% ( Perspectives on Psychological Science , Vol. 10, No. 2, 2015 ).

Those findings have prompted leading health organizations, including the American Heart Association and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), to warn the public against the dangers of isolation, particularly for older adults ( Cené, C. W., et al., Journal of the American Heart Association , Vol. 11, No. 16, 2022 ; Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults: Opportunities for the Health Care System , NASEM, 2020).

Despite the risks, Americans are getting lonelier. In 2021, 12% of U.S. adults said they did not have any close friends, up from 3% in 1990 ( “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss,” Survey Center on American Life, 2021 ). That decline began well before the Covid -19 pandemic, with companionship and social engagement among friends, family, and others decreasing steadily over the past two decades ( Kannan, V. D., & Veazie, P. J., SSM – Population Health , Vol. 21, 2023 ).

Social disconnection, which is rising across age groups, appears to have worsened after 2012, when smartphones and social media became virtually ubiquitous. An international study of high school students found that between 2012 and 2018, school loneliness increased in 36 of 37 countries ( Twenge, J. M., et al., Journal of Adolescence , Vol. 93, No. 1, 2021 ).

“There were significant downward trends in social contact even before the pandemic,” Holt-Lunstad said. “What’s remarkable about that is that ‘getting back to normal’ is not going to be enough—because it wasn’t looking good before.”

The Covid -19 pandemic likely exacerbated an existing trend toward social isolation—and it also provided a natural way for scientists to measure the effects of that shift. Bagwell and psychologist Karen Kochel, PhD, of the University of Richmond, found that college students with less social support from their friends during the first year of the pandemic also had more problems with anxiety, depression, and academic adjustment ( Emerging Adulthood , Vol. 10, No. 5, 2022 ).

“For these students, their relationships with their friends and peers were quite significant in predicting how they were doing, both academically and in terms of their emotional adjustment,” Bagwell said.

[ Related: Making new friends and keeping existing ones is hard. Here’s some science-backed tips to help ]

The strength of “weak” ties

Having a close friend or confidant is undeniably good for us, but psychologists have found that interactions with acquaintances—and even strangers—can also give our mental health a boost. A casual relationship with the operator of a hot dog stand in Toronto helped Gillian Sandstrom, PhD, feel grounded and connected while pursuing her master’s degree. The relationship also inspired Sandstrom, now a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Sussex, to start studying “weak” social ties.

These connections with acquaintances—a work friend you bump into once a week, the pet store employee who remembers your cat—can be surprisingly sustaining. Sandstrom’s research has found that people who have more weak-tie interactions are happier than those who have fewer and that people tend to be happier on days when they have more than their average number of weak-tie interactions ( Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , Vol. 40, No. 7, 2014 ). She also encourages talking to strangers and has shown that repeated practice can make doing so easier and more enjoyable ( Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , Vol. 102, 2022 ).

“These minimal social interactions give us something important that we missed during the pandemic: novelty,” Sandstrom said. “We learn surprising things when we have unplanned encounters and conversations with people,” a benefit that people tend to underestimate ( Atir, S., et al., PNAS , Vol. 119, No. 34, 2022 ).

People often avoid conversations with strangers, assuming they will be awkward or shallow, but research suggests those worries may be overblown. Psychologist Nicholas Epley, PhD, of the University of Chicago, and his colleagues have found that conversations with strangers tend to be less awkward, more enjoyable, and more connecting than people expect. To their own surprise, people also tend to prefer having deep conversations with strangers over shallow ones ( Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , Vol. 122, No. 3, 2022 ).

Sandstrom has some advice for connecting with strangers: Tap into your curiosity. Ask someone what they’re reading, for example, or why they’re wearing airplane earrings. Another tip: Comment on the shared situation. While standing in the checkout line at a mini-mart, Sandstrom once connected with a fellow customer over the store’s unusual mishmash of Halloween and Christmas decorations.

“You’re in the same place at the same time as the other person, so there’s always something in common,” she said.

Lovers and friends

We tend to see friendship and romance as separate entities, but the two may have more in common than we realize. Psychological research points to qualities such as chemistry, intimacy, and warmth as key building blocks of close, stable friendships ( Ledbetter, A. M., et al., Personal Relationships , Vol. 14, No. 2, 2007 ; Campbell, K., et al., The Social Science Journal , Vol. 52, No. 2, 2015 ).

Regular interactions with acquaintances—the local coffee barista, for example—make people happier.

“When we view behaviors that create intimacy—being vulnerable, buying gifts, taking someone out on a date—as only appropriate for a romantic relationship, we end up limiting the potential of our friendships,” said psychologist Marisa G. Franco, PhD, an assistant clinical professor at the University of Maryland and author of Platonic , a book about making and keeping friends. “Many of us could really benefit from blurring the lines between the two.”

Conversely, romantic relationships may be more fulfilling if they look more like friendships. An analysis of nearly 8,000 respondents to the British Household Panel Survey showed that life satisfaction was about twice as high among people who said their spouse was also their best friend ( “How’s Life at Home? New Evidence on Marriage and the Set Point for Happiness,” NBER Working Paper No. 20794, 2014 ).

Research also suggests a symbiosis between romantic and platonic relationships, Franco said, suggesting that one can benefit the other. For example, marital conflict can trigger unhealthy changes in cortisol levels, but that harm is buffered when spouses feel they have adequate social support outside the marriage ( Keneski, E., et al., Social Psychological and Personality Science , Vol. 9, No. 8, 2017 ). Other research indicates that women who have social support are more resilient to stress that occurs within a marriage ( Abbas, J., et al., Journal of Affective Disorders , Vol. 244, 2019 ).

There’s also reason to believe that skills developed in friendships can be carried forward into healthier romantic relationships, particularly among teens and young adults.

“Friendships are the first relationships in life that we get to freely choose,” said Melanie Dirks, PhD, a professor of psychology at McGill University in Montreal who studies peer relationships in children, adolescents, and young adults. “Because of that, they present a really important opportunity to learn how to navigate challenging interpersonal situations before we enter relationships as adults.”

For example, self-disclosure between friends—sharing thoughts and feelings—helps young adults build empathy for others, practice seeking and providing social support, and even solidify their identities, said Rebecca Schwartz-Mette, PhD, an associate professor of clinical psychology and director of the Peer Relations Lab at the University of Maine who studies friendship in children, adolescents, and young adults.

Many young adults in the United States are juggling life transitions, stress, and developmental challenges—and friends are typically their main sources of social support, which makes them critical for psychologists to study and understand, said Dirks.

She has studied the types of challenges that tend to arise in young adult friendships, finding that they undergo strain for one of three reasons: needs are in conflict (for example: there’s one spot on a sports team that both friends want); a transgression occurs (for example: one friend reveals private information about the other); or friends have trouble exchanging support (for example: one has a problem with alcohol use, but the other doesn’t know how to help) ( Journal of Research on Adolescence , Vol. 31, No. 2, 2021 ).

In childhood and adolescence, high-quality friendships can protect kids from mental health issues—such as anxiety and depression—that might otherwise result from social challenges, including being bullied ( Bayer, J. K., et al., Child and Adolescent Mental Health , Vol. 23, No. 4, 2018 ). But there are also conditions where mental health struggles can harm friendships. Schwartz-Mette and her colleagues have found that between friends, excessive self-disclosure about life’s challenges (known as “corumination”) can trigger distancing within a friendship or even lead to the social contagion of depression, self-injury, and suicidality ( Developmental Psychology , Vol. 50, No. 9, 2014 ; Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology , Vol. 47, No. 6, 2018 ).

“Our goal in isolating these different friendship trajectories is to inform interventions for people who are distressed—so that they can keep their relationships and have that crucial social support but not overtax or overstress their relationship partners,” Schwartz-Mette said.

Supporting healthy friendships

Given the clear benefits of friendship, psychologists say we should promote platonic social connection across society—including in school, at work, in public spaces (such as on public transportation), and through entertainment.

“After having to reduce social contact during the pandemic, we’ve realized how it impacts basically every sector of society,” said Holt-Lunstad. “That suggests that each of these sectors can potentially play a role in solutions.”

Researchers still have a lot to learn about how and why social connection supports health and well-being. The National Institutes of Health and other organizations are distributing funding for studies on “dyadic processes”—or interactions between two people—including exciting new efforts to collect fMRI data on friends while they communicate.

“What we know is that if we don’t interact regularly, things go really bad remarkably fast. But what is the magic in these interactions that’s keeping us healthy and sane?” Wheatley asked. “More and more researchers are saying there’s this huge part of human behavior we know very little about. Let’s change that.”

Further resources

The role of friendships in well-being Fehr, B., & Harasmychuk, C. In Maddux, J. E. (Ed.), Subjective Well-Being and Life Satisfaction, Routledge , 2017

Beyond the isolated brain: The promise and challenge of interacting minds Wheatley, T., et al., Neuron , 2019

Adult friendship and wellbeing: A systematic review with practical implications Pezirkianidis, C., et al., Frontiers in Psychology , 2023

What prevents people from making friends: A taxonomy of reasons Apostolou, M., & Keramari, D., Personality and Individual Differences , 2020

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A friendship essay is precisely what it sounds like: a paper that students write to describe their relationships with their mates.  It is among the many assignments that students are given in their college institutions.  Writing essays about friendship is a great way to analyze what the connection means to you and reflect on some of your encounters. It can also be used as a tool to improve your closeness and affection. This blog post offers tips you may consider while writing your paper and its outline. It features friendship essay examples that help generate ideas that form the primary focus of your paper.  If you are not ready to waste your time on essay writing, StudyCrumb is here to offer affordable prices and professional writers.

What Is a Friendship Essay?

The definition of friendship essay is quite clear and straightforward. A paper about friends can be described as a write-up on a relationship between two or more people. This interpretation makes it easier to obtain the meaning of friendship essay.  Writing such thematic essay will help you communicate your feelings as well as your thoughts. It allows you to recollect your memories about different encounters you have had in life. It will also help you evaluate qualities of your connection.  While writing, you may have a sequence of events starting from your meet-up, activities you have done together, and how you have sustained the connection. Preparing an essay about friendship can evoke memories from your past that may have been long forgotten.

Purpose of an Essay on Friendship

This kind of essay aims to help you explore its nature and form, its pros and cons, and its role in your life. The importance of friendship essay is that it acts as a reflective tool. It helps you realize the significance of creating and maintaining good relationships with friends. It also explains how these connections contribute to your overall wellness. In addition, an article about friendship may teach you to understand that true friendship is priceless and should stand the test of time.

Ideas to Write a Friendship Essay on

Writing essays about friendship is a more manageable task than drafting a paper about a topic that may require more detailed research. Any excellent essay about true friendship starts with an idea that you can examine.  Below are some unique ideas you can explore:

• What is friendship?
• What does friendship mean to me?
• The value of friendship you cherish in your life.
• Cross-cultural friendships.
• The role of friendship in mental health maintenance.

As you reflect on your relationship with your friend, see if you can write a paper incorporating these themes. Remember to choose an idea that interests you and is relevant to your personal experiences or research. Be sure to support your arguments with evidence and examples from real-life situations, literature, or academic research. Look through our definition essay topics or persuasive essay ideas to find a theme that suits your task best.

Friendship Essay Outline

An essay outline about friendship is a summary of what your write-up will contain but in a less detailed format. You use it to organize and structure your content logically and effectively. It presents the main topics and subtopics hierarchically, allowing writers to see the connection between different parts of the material. The importance of an outline lies in its ability to help writers plan, organize, as well as clarify their ideas. This makes the writing of an essay about friends more efficient, and the final product is more coherent and effective. Here is an example of an outline for a friendship essay.

• Briefly introduce the topic of friendship
• Provide a thesis statement that summarizes the main points of the essay
• Topic sentence
• Your main argument
• Real-life examples that support your key idea
• Supporting evidence
• 3rd Body Paragraph
• Examples or recommendations
• Summarize the main points
• Provide some food for thought

Note that this is a general outline. The exact structure and content of your essay will depend on the specific requirements of your assignment and your personal interests.

Structure of a Friendship Essay

The structure of an essay on friendship typically includes the following three parts.

• Introduction An introduction should grab the reader's attention and provide background information. It should also include a clear thesis statement that sets a path and direction of the friendship essays.
• Body The essay's body is where you will provide evidence and details to underpin your thesis statement. It should consist of several paragraphs supporting and developing a statement of purpose. Each paragraph should focus on a specific aspect of your friendliness, such as its importance, benefits, or challenges.
• Conclusion Briefly summarize the essay's main points and reinforce your principal argument. The conclusion should leave a lasting impression on readers and emphasize your topic's significance. Overall, the structure should be clear and well-organized, allowing the audience to follow your argument and understand the topic's significance.

Friendship Essay Introduction

A good introduction about friendship essay should grab the reader's attention and encourage them to continue reading. This can be achieved through a " hook ," a quote, an interesting fact, or a thought-provoking question. Background information can then be provided to give context to the discussed topic.  The introduction to an essay about friendship should also clearly state your main point or argument of the piece, known as thesis statement. This sets pace for the rest of the paper and gives readers a clear view of what to expect. A friendship essay introduction should be concise, engaging, and provide context for the audience to understand the content fully.

Read more: How to Start off an Essay

Friendship Essay Introduction Example

Here is an example of a friendship essay introduction that sets the stage for a reflective and thought-provoking exploration of the most precious gift in life.

Friendship is a special bond that unites two individuals with common interests, experiences, and emotions. It makes life easier and contributes to our happiness. It is a relationship that transcends race, religion, and socio-economic status and has power to sustain and uplift the spirit of humans. In this essay, I will explore its benefits and how it can contribute to a better world. Through personal anecdotes, I will illustrate the bond's depth and role in our day-to-day lives.

Friendship Essay Thesis Statement

The friendship thesis statement aims to provide a summary of the essay's main point. It can be one or two sentences which you develop as you research. The statement of purpose should focus on the central argument and be supported by evidence presented in the body. The thesis statement about friendship should guide the essay's structure. Its main objective is to provide your reader with a roadmap to follow. It should be specific, concise, and accurately reflect the content in your paper. Understanding what constitutes a strong thesis is crucial for writers as it is integral to every essay writing process.

Friendship Thesis Statement Example

The thesis statement must be clear to readers so that they may quickly recognize it and comprehend the paper's significance. It should act as a blueprint of what to expect. A friendship thesis statement sample could be:

In this essay, I will explore friendship's meaning, its importance, benefits, drawbacks, and how it can contribute to a better world. Through a series of personal anecdotes, I will illustrate the bond's depth and its key role in our lives.

Friendship Essay Body

The body part should include five or more paragraphs. Students will use body paragraphs to elaborate on the key factors that make their connection special.

• Definition and explanation. This friendship body paragraph should start with a definition and a brief explanation of its characteristics and qualities.
• Importance of friends. Discuss why it is vital in your life and how it contributes to personal growth and welfare.
• Types of friendships. A paragraph about friendship should discuss different types of friend's relationships that exist.
• Qualities of a good friend. Discuss standards a great confidant should possess.
• Challenges. Discuss the common problems that friends face.
• Ways to strengthen friendship. Provide tips on reinforcing and maintaining good relationships.
• Conclusion. Sum up the key points made in your essay and reiterate the importance of genuine bonds in life.

Friendship Body Paragraph Example

Below is a friendship body paragraph sample.

How to Spend Free Time with Friends • Outdoor Activities. Spending time in nature is a great way to bond with friends. You can meet, then go for a hike, take a walk, or go to a picnic in a park. This allows you to connect and enjoy the beautiful world around you. • Movie Night. Watching a movie is another fun activity you can do with friends. You can share popcorn, grab snacks, and enjoy a movie together. This is a great way to relax and unwind. • Board Games. Playing board games with friends is a fun and interactive way to spend free time. You can play classic games like Monopoly. This is a great way to challenge each other and have a good time.

Friendship Essay Conclusion

Any conclusion on a friendship essay should sum up the main ideas discussed in your essay and restate the thesis statement. It should leave a lasting impression and provide a closure to your topic. To start writing a conclusion about a friendship essay, commence by rephrasing the thesis statement in different words. Summarize the points discussed in your essay by connecting them back to your statement of purpose. End conclusion with a final thought or call to action that leaves a lasting impression on your reader.  It is vital to keep it concise yet impactful. Avoid introducing new information or arguments, as it can confuse readers. Instead, focus on tying up loose ends and emphasizing main ideas discussed in your essay.

Read more: How to Conclude an Essay

Friendship Essay Conclusion Sample

Here is an example of a friendship essay conclusion:

In conclusion, friendship is an essential aspect of our lives that brings joy, support, and companionship. It is a relationship built on mutual trust, understanding, and love. A true friend will always be there for you, no matter what. As humans, we need sincere friends to help us navigate life's ups and downs and provide emotional support. An understanding friend can withstand any obstacle and bring happiness to our lives. The connection is meant to last a lifetime, whether through shared experiences, interests, or simply a common bond. Ultimately, having a close group of loyal friends who truly care for us is one of the greatest gifts we can receive in life.

How to Write an Essay on Friendship?

To write an essay about friendship, start by brainstorming ideas about what friends mean to you and the benefits of such kinds of relationships. Knowing how to write a good essay about friendship involves selecting a great topic and arranging your content in a manner that has logical flow.

1. Come Up With a Topic About Friendship

To brainstorm essay topics on friendship, consider the following.

• Reflect on your own experiences. Think about your own bonds and encounters you have had with allies. Avoid bad occurrences. This can inspire topics to explore in your essay. To find a subject that interests you, you can also look through internet examples of friend essays.
• Ask questions related to friends, such as "What makes a meaningful connection?" or "How does the quality of your bond change over time?"
• Talk to others. Ask friends, family, or classmates about their experiences. They may have interesting insights that can inspire new topics for your essay.

Ensure that topic you select is appropriate for your report style. For example: 

The Day my Best Friend Changed My Life.

You can start this topic by how you met, narrate your story, and then pick out some attributes of a good friend and the advantages of the relationship. Remember to choose a topic on friendship essay that you feel passionate about and can explore in depth in your essay.

2. Do Research

To research and collect information for the friend essay, follow these steps.

• Start with a general search. Use search engines like Google to find articles, books, and other resources on affection.
• Identify keywords. Determine the most relevant keywords for your essay, such as "essay about a friend." Use them in your search to narrow down results to the most pertinent information.
• Evaluate sources. When you have a list of potential sources, evaluate each to determine their credibility and relevance. Look for sources that are written by experts in the field and that have been peer-reviewed or published in reputable journals.
• Take notes. As you read, take notes on the most important and relevant information.

3. Develop a Friendship Essay Outline

An outline is a useful tool for organizing ideas in an essay and it ensures that your essay has a structure. Before outlining you need to have a clear vision of what your essay will focus on. Then analyze every piece of information that you have and categorize it into headings. An outline of an essay about friendships will comprise a list which consists of each paragraph’s topic sentence . By going through the outline, you are able to examine what purpose each paragraph serves. If you need assistance on how to create an outline for a college essay about friendship use the outline example shown below.

4. Write an Essay on Friendship

Writing an essay about friendship is an exciting task. Below is a sample of how you can write your friendship essay. Friendship is the bond between two or more individuals based on mutual trust, support, and understanding. This connection can develop at any stage of life and even last a lifetime. It is a bond that fills our lives with comfort, laughter, and advice during a hard period. Many different factors can contribute to its formation and success. Having similar needs, mutual interests, and social activities can help sustain the relationship. Another crucial aspect is being ready to support each other through happy and difficult times unconditionally. Trust is also an essential component in the longevity of this connection. In conclusion, friendship is an invaluable treasure that brings joy, comfort, and support to our lives. It provides a safe place in a world that can be harsh and unforgiving. It reminds us that we should always stay true to each other.

5. Proofread Your Friendship Essay

When writing a friendship essay, consider the following for an effective introduction.

• Grab your reader's attention. A good introduction makes them want to continue reading your friendship essay.
• Provide context. Give an overview of the friendship essay and its purpose. This will make readers interested in your work.
• Establish your purpose. Clearly state the main idea or thesis.
• Preview the main points. Briefly summarize key points that will be covered.
• Be concise. An introduction should be short and on point, generally no more than one or two paragraphs.

Remember, your introduction will set tone for the rest of your piece and should encourage your readers to continue reading.

Read more: Essay About Happiness : Tips & Examples

Friendship Essay Examples

A sample essay about friendship can be critical to students, especially when they are researching and collecting information. Free friendship essays help you get ideas on how to write and structure your essay. Below are essay examples about friendship that you can go through to help with your writing and draw inspiration from. Friendship essay example 1

Friendship essay example 2

Essay about friendship sample 3

Example of essay on friendship 4

Friendship Essay Writing Tips

Here are some extra tips you need to know that will motivate you to write a friendship short essay.

• You could start with a quote, an anecdote, or a surprising fact.
• Use examples from your own life to illustrate your points in your school college essay about friendship, as this will make your essay more relatable and interesting to read.
• Friendship titles for essays should be clear and straightforward. They should also reflect your main points.
• Describe the aspect of the bond that, in your opinion, is most crucial. It is possible to personalize something that means an entirely different thing to various individuals.

Bottom Line on Friendship Essay Writing

Your central task is to understand what is a friendship essay even before you start writing. Friendship essays explore the nature of our relationships and their various aspects. They can take various forms, from short reflective essays to longer, more analytical pieces. These papers can discuss qualities that make a good friend, the benefits of your relationship, or challenges of maintaining close relationships. Examples of short essays about friendship could be a personal reflection, exploring the unique bond between the writer and their friend and what they hope to continue gaining from each other when they cross paths in future. If you struggle with other papers, feel free to check out our writing guides. From an essay about bullying to a world peace essay , we’ve got you covered.

FAQ About Friendship Essay

1. may i use friendship quotes for the essay.

Yes, it is always a winning step. You can write an essay on friendship with quotes either as the title of your essay or as an introductory phrase. You can also include it in the body of your work while narrating your story.

2. How to write a hook for an essay of friendship?

An essay should hook your reader's attention and make them want to read your story. When writing essays about friendship, you can describe a unique situation in which your friends helped you. You can also end your introduction with a catchy quote, such as Squad goals! Some other quotes that you can use include:

• A road to a friend's house is never long.
• Count your age with friends and years.
• True friend is seen through the heart, not through the eyes.

3. Explain the importance of friendship essay.

The importance of friendship essay is that it teaches students to express their thoughts and feelings about confidants and benefits they obtain from this connection. It also acts as a reflective tool. Friend essays also help students realize advantages of creating and maintaining good relationships with friends and how these linkages contribute to your overall wellness and welfare.

Daniel Howard is an Essay Writing guru. He helps students create essays that will strike a chord with the readers.

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Essay on Importance of Friendship

Students are often asked to write an essay on Importance of Friendship in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Importance of Friendship

The essence of friendship.

Friendship is a valuable treasure in our lives. It is a bond of love, trust, and mutual respect. Friends stand by us in times of joy and sorrow, making life more meaningful.

Role of Friendship

Friends teach us important life lessons. They help us understand different perspectives, fostering empathy and compassion. They also offer emotional support and help us build our confidence.

Friendship and Personal Growth

Friendship encourages personal growth. It nurtures our emotional intelligence, helps us learn to communicate effectively, and develops our problem-solving skills. True friendship is a gift that enriches our life journey.

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250 Words Essay on Importance of Friendship

Friendship, a profound human experience, is a cornerstone of our social fabric. It transcends the boundaries of race, religion, and culture, fostering an environment of mutual respect, understanding, and shared values.

Psychological Impact of Friendship

Friendship plays a critical role in our psychological well-being. It provides emotional support, helping to mitigate stress and anxiety. Friends serve as a sounding board, allowing us to express our thoughts and emotions freely, which can be therapeutic and contribute to our overall mental health.

Friendship as a Learning Platform

Friendship is also a platform for personal growth and learning. Friends expose us to diverse perspectives, encouraging us to think critically and broaden our horizons. They challenge our beliefs, prompting us to question and refine our viewpoints, fostering our intellectual growth.

The Role of Friendship in Shaping Character

Moreover, friendship shapes our character. The qualities we admire in our friends often inspire us to cultivate those traits within ourselves. They mirror our strengths and weaknesses, helping us to self-reflect and strive for personal improvement.

Friendship and Social Cohesion

On a societal level, friendships foster social cohesion. They promote empathy and tolerance, as we learn to accept our friends’ differences and appreciate our commonalities. This understanding and acceptance can extend beyond our immediate circle, promoting a more inclusive society.

In conclusion, the importance of friendship cannot be overstated. It supports our mental health, encourages personal growth, shapes our character, and promotes social cohesion. Despite its often underestimated value, friendship is an integral part of our lives, enriching our experiences and contributing to our personal and societal well-being.

500 Words Essay on Importance of Friendship

The value of friendship, emotional support and mental health.

One of the primary importances of friendship lies in its capacity to provide emotional support. Friends are our confidants, providing us a safe space to express our feelings, fears, hopes, and dreams without the fear of judgment. They provide comfort during times of stress, acting as a buffer against mental health issues like depression and anxiety. Their presence and understanding can help us navigate through the complexities of life, promoting emotional well-being.

Social Development and Personal Growth

Friendship plays a crucial role in our social development and personal growth. Friends expose us to diverse perspectives, cultures, and experiences, broadening our worldview. They challenge our beliefs, encourage us to step out of our comfort zones, and inspire us to become better versions of ourselves. This process of mutual learning and growth is a significant aspect of friendship.

Resilience in the Face of Adversity

Physical health and longevity.

The importance of friendship extends to our physical health and longevity. Studies suggest that strong social connections can contribute to a longer, healthier life. Friends can encourage positive lifestyle habits such as regular exercise and a balanced diet. Moreover, the happiness derived from friendship can boost our immune system, reducing the risk of chronic diseases.

Friendship and Society

On a larger scale, friendship contributes to societal harmony. It fosters empathy, understanding, and respect among individuals, creating a more inclusive and tolerant society. Friends from diverse backgrounds can help break down cultural and social barriers, promoting unity and cooperation.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Essay on Friendship for Students and Children

500+ words essay on friendship.

Friendship is one of the greatest bonds anyone can ever wish for. Lucky are those who have friends they can trust. Friendship is a devoted relationship between two individuals. They both feel immense care and love for each other. Usually, a friendship is shared by two people who have similar interests and feelings.

You meet many along the way of life but only some stay with you forever. Those are your real friends who stay by your side through thick and thin. Friendship is the most beautiful gift you can present to anyone. It is one which stays with a person forever.

True Friendship

A person is acquainted with many persons in their life. However, the closest ones become our friends. You may have a large friend circle in school or college , but you know you can only count on one or two people with whom you share true friendship.

There are essentially two types of friends, one is good friends the other are true friends or best friends. They’re the ones with whom we have a special bond of love and affection. In other words, having a true friend makes our lives easier and full of happiness.

Most importantly, true friendship stands for a relationship free of any judgments. In a true friendship, a person can be themselves completely without the fear of being judged. It makes you feel loved and accepted. This kind of freedom is what every human strives to have in their lives.

In short, true friendship is what gives us reason to stay strong in life. Having a loving family and all is okay but you also need true friendship to be completely happy. Some people don’t even have families but they have friends who’re like their family only. Thus, we see having true friends means a lot to everyone.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Friendship

Friendship is important in life because it teaches us a great deal about life. We learn so many lessons from friendship which we won’t find anywhere else. You learn to love someone other than your family. You know how to be yourself in front of friends.

Friendship never leaves us in bad times. You learn how to understand people and trust others. Your real friends will always motivate you and cheer for you. They will take you on the right path and save you from any evil.

Similarly, friendship also teaches you a lot about loyalty. It helps us to become loyal and get loyalty in return. There is no greater feeling in the world than having a friend who is loyal to you.

Moreover, friendship makes us stronger. It tests us and helps us grow. For instance, we see how we fight with our friends yet come back together after setting aside our differences. This is what makes us strong and teaches us patience.

Therefore, there is no doubt that best friends help us in our difficulties and bad times of life. They always try to save us in our dangers as well as offer timely advice. True friends are like the best assets of our life because they share our sorrow, sooth our pain and make us feel happy.

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The Works of Francis Bacon/Volume 1/Essays/Of Friendship

XXVII. OF FRIENDSHIP.

It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech, "Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god:" for it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen; as Epimenides, the Candian; Numa, the Roman; Empedocles, the Sicilian; and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: "magna civitas, magna solitudo;" because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighbourhoods: but we may go farther, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind; you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs, castareum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we speak: so great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness: for princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be as it were companions, and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persona the name of favourites, or privadoes, as if it were matter of grace, or conversation; but the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them "participes curarum;" for it is that which tieth the knot: and we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever ​ reigned, who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants, whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed others likewise to call them in the same manner, using the word which is received between private men.

L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed the Great) to that height, that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla's overmatch; for when he had carried the consulship for a friend of his, against the pursuit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and in effect bade him be quiet; for that more men adored the sun rising than the sun setting. With Julius Cæsar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, as he set him down in his testament for heir in remainder after his nephew; and this was the man that had power with him to draw him forth to his death: for when Cæsar would have discharged the senate, in regard of some ill presages, and specially a dream of Calpurnia, this man lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate till his wife had dreamed a better dream; and it seemeth his favour was so great, as Antonius, in a letter which is recited verbatim in one of Cicero's Philippics, calleth him "venefica,"—"witch;" as if he had enchanted Cæsar. Augustus raised Agrippa (though of mean birth) to that height, as, when he consulted with Mæcenas about the marriage of his daughter Julia, Mæcenas took the liberty to tell him, that he must either marry his daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life: there was no third way, he had made him so great. With Tiberius Cæsar, Sejanus had ascended to that height as they two were termed and reckoned as a pair of friends. Tiberius, in a letter to him, saith, "hæc pro amicitiâ nostra non occultavi;" and the whole senate dedicated an altar to Friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of the great dearness of friendship between them two. The like, or more, was between Septimius Severus and Plantianus; for he forced his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plantianus, and would often maintain Plantianus in doing affronts to his son: and did write also, in a letter to the senate, by these words: "I love the man so well, as I wish he may over-live me." Now, if these princes had been as a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, a man might have thought that this had proceeded of an abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of themselves, as all these were, it proveth most plainly, that they found their own felicity (though as great as ever happened to mortal men) but as an half piece, except they might have a friend to make it entire; and yet, which is more, they were princes that had wives, sons, nephews; and yet all these could not supply the comfort of friendship.

It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observeth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy, namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none; and least of all, those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and saith that towards his latter time that closeness did impair and a little perish his understanding. Surely Comineus might have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second master, Lewis the Eleventh, whose closeness was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras is dark but true, "Cor ne edito,"—"eat not the heart." Certainly, if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts: but one thing is most admirable, (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship,) which is, that this communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halfs; for there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more: and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a man's mind of like virtue as the alchymists use to attribute to their stone for man's body, that it worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good and benefit of nature: but yet, without praying in aid of alchymists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature; for, in bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural action; and, on the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent impression; and even so it is of minds.

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for the understanding, as the first is for the affections; for friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts: neither is this to be understood only of faithful counsel, which a man receiveth from his friend; but before you come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up, in the communicating and discoursing with another; he tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when they are turned into words: finally, he waxeth wiser than himself; and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia, "That speech was like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad; whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs." Neither is this second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel, (they indeed are best,) but even without that a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a ​ statue or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.

Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other point which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation: which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas, "Dry light is ever the best," and certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment: which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. So as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer; for there is no such flatterer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is of two sorts; the one concerning manners, the other concerning business: for the first, the best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man's self to a strict account is a medicine sometimes too piercing and corrosive; reading good books of morality is a little flat and dead; observing our faults in others is sometimes improper for our case; but the best receipt (best I say to work and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what gross errors and extreme absurdities many (especially of the greater sort) do commit for want of a friend to tell them of them, to the great damage both of their fame and fortune: for, as St. James saith, they are as men "that looks sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favour:" as for business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than one; or, that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or, that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four and twenty letters; or, that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all: but when all is done, the help of good counsel is that which setteth business straight: and if any man think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces; asking counsel in one business of one man, and in another business of another man; it is well, (that is to say, better, perhaps, than if he asked none at all,) but he runneth two dangers; one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled; for it is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some ends which he hath that giveth it: the other, that he shall have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe, (though with good meaning,) and mixed partly of mischief, and partly of remedy; even as if you would call a physician, that is thought good for the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your body; and, therefore, may put you in a way for a present cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind, and so cure the disease, and kill the patient: but a friend, that is wholly acquainted with a man's estate will beware, by furthering any present business, how he dasheth upon other inconvenience; and, therefore, rest not upon scattered counsels; they will rather distract and mislead, than settle and direct.

After these two noble fruits of friendship, (peace in the affections, and support of the judgment,) followeth the last fruit, which is, like the pomegranate, full of many kernels; I mean, aid and bearing a part in all actions and occasions. Here the best way to represent to life the manifold use of friendship, is to cast and see how many things there are which a man cannot do himself: and then it will appear that it was a sparing speech of the ancients, to say, "that a friend is another himself; for that a friend is far more than himself." Men have their time, and die many times in desire of some things which they principally take to heart: the bestowing of a child, the finishing of a work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those things will continue after him; so that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship is, all offices of life are, as it were, granted to him and his deputy; for he may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face, or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them: a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate, or beg, and a number of the like: but all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's person hath many proper relations which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms: whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person: but to enumerate these things were endless; I have given the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part, if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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The Importance Of Friendship In Our Daily Life

Table of contents

How to write essay about friendship - intro, essay on friendship 1 (100 words), introduction, role of a friend, essay on friendship 2 (200 words), honesty and patience in friendship, essay on friendship 3 (300 words), the desire to belong, the little moments that matter, essay on friendship 4 (400 words), role of friendship in society, steps taken to promote friendship, essay on friendship 5 (500 words), the problems of modern friendship, how to find a real friend, essay on friendship – essay 6 (600 words), benefits of friendship, true and dishonest friendship, carefulness in the selection of friendship, best qualities of good friendship, essay on true friendship – essay 7 (700 words), essay on friendship – essay 8 (900 words), importance, types, examples of friendship – essay 9 (1000 words), importance of friendship, choosing your friends wisely, types of friends, friendship examples from history.

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Essay on Friendship

List of essays on friendship, essay on friendship – short essay for kids (essay 1 – 150 words), essay on friendship – 10 lines on friendship written in english (essay 2 – 250 words), essay on friendship – for school students (class 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) (essay 3 – 300 words), essay on friendship – for students (essay 4 – 400 words), essay on friendship (essay 5 – 500 words), essay on friendship – introduction, benefits and qualities (essay 6 – 600 words), essay on friendship – essay on true friendship (essay 7 – 750 words), essay on friendship – importance, types, examples and conclusion (essay 8 – 1000 words).

Friendship is a divine relationship, which is defined by neither blood nor any other similarity. Who is in this world does not have a friend?

A friend, with whom you just love to spend your time, can share your joys and sorrows. Most importantly you need not fake yourself and just be what you are. That is what friendship is all about. It is one of the most beautiful of the relations in the world. Students of today need to understand the values of friendship and therefore we have composed different long essays for students as well as short essays.

Audience: The below given essays are exclusively written for school students (Class 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 Standard).

Introduction:

Friendship is considered as one of the treasures that anyone can possess. God has given us the liberty to choose friends because they are for our lifetime. It is quite normal for our parents and siblings to love us because they are our own blood but a friend is someone who is initially a stranger and then takes his/her place above all the other relations. Friendship is nothing but pure love without any expectations.

Role of a Friend:

True friends share and support each other even during the toughest of times. A true friend is one who feels happy for our success, who feel sad for our failures, fight with us for silly things and hugs us the next second, gets angry on us when we do any mistakes. Friendship is all about having true friends who can understand us without the need for us to speak.

Conclusion:

Friendship is very essential for a happy life. Even a two-minute chat with a friend will make us forget our worries. That is the strength of friendship.

Friendship is a divine relationship, which is defined by neither blood nor any other similarity. Friends are those you can choose for yourself in spite of the difference you both have from each other. A good friend in need will do wonders in your life, whenever you are in need of self-realization, upbringing your confidence and more.

Friendship serves you best not only in your happiest moments but also when you feel low in emotions. A life without a good friend is not at all complete and an emptiness will be felt all the time you think of sharing your emotion that can’t be told to anyone else.

Honesty and Patience in Friendship:

To maintain and keep going with a good deep friendship, honesty is the most important factor. You should choose a person who can be cent percent honest with you in all perspective like emotions, decision making, etc. Trustworthy friendship will help you to take better decisions and choose a better path for your future well-being.

Tolerance and patience with each other are another important characteristics of long-lasting friendship. Accepting the differences, friends should be able to be with each other in all situations. As a friend, the person should lead the other to success by being a motivation and criticize the person if they choose the wrong path.

Friendship will give you sweet and happy memories that can be cherished for a lifetime and if you succeed in maintaining that precious relation, then you are the luckiest person in this world. Love and care for each other will cherish the relationship and helps the person to appreciate each thing done without any fail.

Of all the different relations which we indulge in, friendship is considered to be the purest of them all. Friendship is the true confluence of souls with like minded attitude that aids in seamless conversation and the best of times. It is believed that a person who doesn’t have any friend lives one of the toughest lives.

The Desire to Belong:

Each one of us have been so programmed that we need a companion even if it’s not romantic, someone just to tag along. There are several definitions of friendship and it is upon you as to how you believe your relation to be. Friendship can happen when you are simply sharing a bowl of food with a person day after day. It can be expressed in the way you silently care for someone even when they may not be aware of your existence.

The Little Moments that Matter:

It is giving up the little things you love dearly for the sake of someone you cherish a great deal. Friendship often refers to the little moments of senseless laugh you two share when the rest of the world starts to look bleak. It is to know what your friend needs and being there for them even when the rest of the world has turned their back towards them.

Friendship is the kind of relation which sometimes even exceeds the realms of love because it is all about giving without even once bothering to sense what you shall get back. Every time spent is special because when you are with friends, you don’t feel the blues!

The Bottom-Line:

Of course the definition of friendship is going to vary a great deal from one person to another. But, remember one thing, when you are friends with someone, be prepared to put your heart on the line for their happiness because friendship often manifests into love, even if it is not romantic, it always is true!

Friendship is the most valuable as well as precious gifts of life. Friendship is one of the most valued relationship. People who have good friends enjoy the most in their live. True friendship is based on loyalty & support. A good friend is a person who will stand with you when times are tough. A friend is someone special on whom you can rely on to celebrate a special moment. Friendship is like a life asset and it can lead us to success. It all depends on our choice how we choose our friends.

The quality of friendship is essential for happiness. The benefits of healthy friendship remains long-life. In addition, having a strong friend circle also improves our self-confidence. Due to the strong relationship, we get much emotional support during our bad times. True friendship is a feeling of love & care.

Real friendship cannot be built within limited boundaries like caste or creed. It gives us a feeling that someone really needs us & we are not alone. This is true that man cannot live alone. True friends are needed in every stage of life to survive. A true friend can be an old person or a child. But it is generally believed that we make friend with people who are of the same age as ours. Same age group can give you the freedom to share anything.

The selection of a true friend is also a challenging task. We have to carefully make our friend selection. Friends might come & go. They will make you laugh & cry. Wrong selection can create various problems for you. In the modern world, many youngsters become a social nuisance. The reason behind it is wrong & bad friendships.

But if we successfully choose the right person as a friend then our life becomes easier. It doesn’t matter who you are, what type of clothes you wear. The most important thing is trust because the relation of friendship stands on the pillars of trust.

Friendship is a relation which can make or break us in every stage of life. But in other words, friendship is an asset which is really precious. Obviously, it is also not so easy to maintain friendships. It demands your time as well as efforts. Last but not the least, it is hard to find true friendship but once you succeed in this task you will have a wonderful time. In exchange for that a friend will only need your valuable time and trust.

The idea of friendship is either heartwarming or gives cold feet depending on individuals and the types of friendships. In the current world, friendships have had different definitions based on the morality and civilization of the society. Ideally, friendship is defined as the state of mutual trust between individuals or parties. Trust is an important component of friendship because it determines the reliability and longevity of the friendship. Trust is built through honest communications between the individuals and interested parties.

Once trust has been established, mutual understanding and support being to form the resulting in a friendship. This friendship can be broken through lack of trust. Trust can be breached through deceit and/ or some people, it differs with the frequencies. There are people who will break friendships after only one episode of dishonesty whereas some people give second chances and even more chances. Friendship types determine the longevity and the causes of breakups. The importance of friendship in the lives of individuals is the reason why friendships are formed in the first place.

Types of Friendships:

According to Aristotle’s Nichomachean ethics, there are three types of friendships. The friendships are based on three factors i.e. utility, pleasure and goodness. The first type of friendship is based on utility and has been described as a friendship whereby both parties gain from each other.

This type of friendship is dependent on the benefits and that is what keeps the friendship going. This type of friendships do not last long because it dissolves as soon as the benefits are outsourced or when other sources are found outside the friendship. The friendship was invented for trade purposes because when two people with opposite things that depend on each other re put together, trade is maximized.

The second type of friendship is based on pleasure. This is described as friendship in which two individuals are drawn to each other based on desires of pleasure and is characterized by passionate feelings and feelings of belonging. This type of friendship can ether last long or is short-lived depending on the presence of the attraction between the two parties.

The third type of friendship is based on goodness. In this friendship, the goodness of people draw them to each other and they usually have the same virtues. The friendship involves loving each other and expecting goodness. It takes long to develop this kind of friendship but it usually lasts longest and is actually the best kind of friendship to be in. the importance of such a friendship is the social support and love.

In conclusion, friendships are important in the lives of individuals. Trust builds and sustains friendships. The different types of friendships are important because they provide benefits and social support. Friendships provide a feeling of belonging and dependence. The durability of friendships is dependent on the basis of its formation and the intention during the formation. Friendships that last long are not based on materialistic gain, instead, they are based on pure emotion.

Friendship is an emotion of care, mutual trust, and fondness among two persons. A friend might be a work-mate, buddy, fellow student or any individual with whom we feel an attachment.

In friendship, people have a mutual exchange of sentiments and faith too. Usually, the friendship nurtures more amongst those people who belong to a similar age as they possess the same passions, interests, sentiments, and opinions. During the school days, kids who belong to the similar age group have a common dream about their future and this makes them all of them get closer in friendship.

In the same way, employees working in business organizations also make friends as they are working together for attaining the organizational objectives. It does not matter that to which age group you belong, friendship can happen at any time of your life.

Benefits of Friendship:

Sometimes friendship is essential in our life. Below are a few benefits of friendship.

1. It’s impossible to live your life alone always but friendship fills that gap quickly with the friend’s company.

2. You can easily pass the rigidities of life with the friendship as in your distress period your friends are always there to help you.

3. Friendship teaches you how to remain happy in life.

4. In case of any confusion or problem, your friendship will always benefit you with good opinions.

True and Dishonest Friendship:

True friendship is very rare in today’s times. There are so many persons who support only those people who are in power so that they can fulfil their selfish motives below the name of friendship. They stay with friends till the time their selfish requirements are achieved. Dishonest friends leave people as soon as their power gets vanished. You can find these types of self-seeking friends all around the world who are quite hurtful than enemies.

Finding a true friendship is very difficult. A true friend helps the other friend who is in need. It does not matter to him that his friend is right or wrong but he will always support his friend at the time of his difficulty.

Carefulness in the Selection of Friendship:

You must be very careful while choosing friends. You should nurture your friendship with that person who does not leave you in your bad times easily. Once you get emotionally attached to the wrong person you cannot finish your friendship so soon. True friendship continues till the time of your last breaths and does not change with the passing time.

Friendship with a bad person also affects your own thoughts and habits. Therefore, a bad person should not be chosen in any type of circumstances. We must do friendship with full attention and carefulness.

Best Qualities of Good Friendship:

Good friendship provides people an enormous love to each other.

The below are the important qualities of good friendship:

1. Good friendship is always faithful, honest, and truthful.

2. People pay attention and take note of others thoughts in good friendship.

3. Persons quickly forget and let off the mistakes of the other friend. In fact, they accept their friend in the way they are actually.

4. You are not judged on the basis of your success, money or power in it.

5. Friends do not feel shy to provide us with valuable opinions for our welfare.

6. People always share their joyful times with their good friends and also stay ready to help their friends in the time of need.

7. True friends also support others in their professional as well as personal life. They encourage their friends in the area of their interest.

Friendship is established over the sacrifice, love, faith, and concern of mutual benefit. True Friendship is a support and a blessing for everybody. All those males and females who have true and genuine friends are very lucky really.

Friendship can simply be defined as a form of mutual relationship or understanding between two people or more who interact and are attached to one another in a manner that is friendly. A friendship is a serious relationship of devotion between two or more people where people involved have a true and sincere feeling of affection, care and love towards each other devoid of any misunderstanding and without demands.

Primarily friendship happens between people that have the same sentiments, feelings and tastes. It is believed that there is no limit or criteria for friendship. All of the different creed, religion, caste, position, sex and age do not matter when it comes to friendship even though friendships can sometimes be damaged by economic disparity and other forms of differentiation. From all of these, it can be concluded that real and true friendship is very possible between people that have a uniform status and are like-minded.

A lot of friends we have in the world today only remain together in times of prosperity and absence of problems but only the faithful, sincere and true friends remain all through the troubles, times of hardships and our bad times. We only discover who our bad and good friends are in the times where we don’t have things going our way.

Most people want to be friends with people with money and we can’t really know if our friends are true when we have money and do not need their help, we only discover our true friends when we need their help in terms of money or any other form of support. A lot of friendships have been jeopardised because of money and the absence or presence of it.

Sometimes, we might face difficulty or crises in our friendships because of self-respect and ego. Friendships can be affected by us or others and we need to try to strike a balance in our friendships. For our friendship to prosper and be true, we need satisfaction, proper understanding and a trustworthy nature. As true friends, we should never exploit our friends but instead do our utmost best to motivate and support them in doing and attaining the very best things in life.

The true meaning of friendship is sometimes lost because of encounters with fake friends who have used and exploited us for their own personal benefits. People like this tend to end the friendship once they get what they want or stab their supposed friends in the back just to get what they think is best for them. Friendship is a very good thing that can help meet our need for companionship and other emotional needs.

In the world we live in today, it is extremely difficult to come across good and loyal friends and this daunting task isn’t made any easier by the lie and deceit of a lot of people in this generation. So, when one finds a very good and loyal important, it is like finding gold and one should do everything to keep friends like that.

The pursuit of true friendship Is not limited to humans, we can as well find good friends in animals; for example, it is a popular belief that dogs make the best friends. It is very important to have good friends as they help us in times and situations where we are down and facing difficulties. Our true friends always do their best to save us when we are in danger and also provide us with timely and good advice. True friends are priceless assets in our lives, they share our pains and sorrow, help provide relief to us in terrible situations and do their best to make us happy.

Friends can both be the good or the bad types. Good friends help push us on the right path in life while on the other hand, bad friends don’t care about us but only care about themselves and can lead us into the wrong path; because of this, we have to be absolutely careful when choosing our friends in this life.

Bad friends can ruin our lives completely so we have to be weary of them and do our best to avoid bag friends totally. We need friends in our life that will be there for us at every point in time and will share all of our feeling with us, both the good and bad. We need friends we can talk to anytime we are feeling lonely, friends that will make us laugh and smile anytime we are feeling sad.

What is friendship? It is the purest form of relationship between two individual with no hidden agenda. As per the dictionary, it is the mutual affection between people. But, is it just a mutual affection? Not always, as in the case of best friends, it is far beyond that. Great friends share each other’s feelings or notions which bring a feeling of prosperity and mental fulfillment.

A friend is a person whom one can know deeply, as and trust for eternity. Rather than having some likeness in the idea of two people associated with the friendship, they have some extraordinary qualities yet they want to be with each other without changing their uniqueness. By and large, friends spur each other without censuring, however at times great friends scrutinize do affect you in a positive manner.

Importance of Friendship:

It is very important to have a friend in life. Each friend is vital and their significance in known to us when certain circumstances emerge which must be supported by our friends. One can never feel lonely in this world on the off chance that he or she is embraced by true friends. Then again, depression wins in the lives of the individuals who don’t have friends regardless of billions of individuals present on the planet. Friends are particularly vital amid times of emergency and hardships. On the off chance that you wind up experiencing a hard time, having a friend to help you through can make the change simpler.

Having friends you can depend on can help your confidence. Then again, an absence of friends can make you feel lonely and without help, which makes you powerless for different issues, for example, sadness and drug abuse. Having no less than one individual you can depend on will formulate your confidence.

Choosing Your Friends Wisely:

Not all friends can instill the positivity in your life. There can be negative effects as well. It is very important to choose your friends with utmost wisdom. Picking the right friend is somewhat troublesome task however it is extremely important. In the event that for instance a couple of our dear friends are engaged with negative behaviour patterns, for example, smoking, drinking and taking drugs, at some point or another we will be attracted to their bad habits as well. This is the reason behind why it is appropriate to settle on an appropriate decision with regards to making friends.

Genuine friendship is truly a gift delighted in by a couple. The individuals who have it ought to express gratitude toward God for having genuine pearls in their lives and the individuals who don’t have a couple of good friends ought to always take a stab at better approaches to anchor great friends. No organization is superior to having a friend close by in the midst of need. You will stay cheerful in your one-room flat on the off chance that you are surrounded by your friends; then again, you can’t discover satisfaction even in your estate in the event that you are far away from others.

Types of Friends:

There is variety everywhere, so why not in friends. We can see different types of friends during our journey of life. For instance, your best friend at school is someone with whom you just get along the most. That friend, especially in the case of girls, may just get annoyed even if you talk to another of your friend more than her. Such is the childish nature of such friendships that at times it is difficult for others to identify whether you are best friends or competitors.

Then there is another category of your siblings. No matter how much you deny, but your siblings or your elder brother and sisters are those friends of yours who stay on with you for your entire life. You have a different set of friendship with them as you find yourself fighting with them most of the times. However, in times of need, you shall see that they are first ones standing behind you, supporting you.

There is another category of friends called professional friends. You come across such friends only when you grow up and choose a profession for yourself. These friends are usually from the same organisation and prove to be helpful during your settling years. Some of them tend to stay on with you even when you change companies.

Friendship Examples from History:

History has always taught us a lot. Examples of true friendship are not far behind. We have some famous example from history which makes us realise the true value of friendship. The topmost of them are the Krishna and Sudama friendship. We all must have read or heard as to how after becoming a king when Krishna met Sudama, his childhood friend, he treated him with honour even though Sudama was a poor person. It teaches us the friendship need not be between equals. It has to be between likeminded people. Next example is of Karna and Duryodhana, again from the Mahabharat era.

Despite knowing the fact that the Pandavas were his brothers, Karna went on to fight alongside Duryodhan as he is his best friend and even laid down his life for him. What more example of true friendship can one find? Again from the same era, Krishna and Arjun are also referred to as the best of the friends. Bhagavad Gita is an example of how a true friend can guide you towards positivity in life and make you follow the path of Dharma. Similarly, there are numerous examples from history which teach us the values of true friendship and the need to nourish such for own good.

Whether you accept or deny it, a friend plays an important role in your life. In fact, it is very important to have a friend. However, at the same time, it is extremely important to choose the friends wisely as they are the ones who can build you or destroy you. Nonetheless, a friend’s company is something which one enjoys all through life and friends should be treated as the best treasure a man can have.

Friendship , Relationship

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Friendship — Making Friends And The Importance Of Friendship

Making Friends and The Importance of Friendship

• Categories: Friendship

About this sample

Words: 1035 |

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 1035 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Friendship essay outline, friendship essay example, introduction.

• The importance of making friends in life

Types of Friends

• The value of having diverse types of friends
• The positive impacts of different types of friends on one's life

Polar Opposite Friend

• The benefits of having a friend who is a polar opposite
• Encouragement to try new things and gain new perspectives
• Creating a balance in the friendship

Builder Friend

• The role of a builder friend in providing support and guidance
• Trustworthiness and honesty in the relationship
• Pushing you to achieve your goals and dreams

Best Friend

• The unique bond and connection with a best friend
• Honesty, emotional support, and no-judgment zone
• Unconditional love and encouragement to be a better person
• The importance of surrounding oneself with supportive and caring friends
• The impact of friendships on personal growth and happiness

Works Cited:

• Baker, E. D. (1989). "Symbolism in Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path.'" In E. D. Jones (Ed.), Masterplots II: Short Story Series (Vol. 7, pp. 3925-3927). Salem Press.
• Cowart, D. (1984). "Phoenix Has No Coat: Historicity, Eschatology, and Scapegoating in 'A Worn Path.'" Studies in Short Fiction, 21(1), 45-56.
• Duvall, J. D. (2004). "Overview of 'A Worn Path'." In Short Stories for Students (Vol. 19, pp. 1-15). Gale.
• Evans, R. C. (1973). "The Art of 'A Worn Path.'" The Southern Review, 9(1), 101-108.
• Friedmann, M. (1990). "The Inverted World of Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path.'" College Language Association Journal, 33(3), 282-289.
• Gaudet, M. (1989). "Life and Death in Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path.'" In E. D. Jones (Ed.), Masterplots II: Short Story Series (Vol. 7, pp. 3922-3925). Salem Press.
• Grimsley, R. (1984). "Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path': The Eternal Quest of Welty's Phoenix Jackson." Mississippi Quarterly, 37(4), 539-550.
• Korb, R. (2017). "A Worn Path." In Masterpieces of American Short Fiction (pp. 222-228). Greenwood Press.
• Moreland, R. (2010). "Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path' and the Slave Narrative Tradition." The Southern Literary Journal, 43(2), 15-26.
• Smith, E. A. (1984). "The Journey of Life: Symbolism in Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path.'" The Mississippi Quarterly, 37(2), 231-239.

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Importance of Friendship Essay

• Essay on the Importance of Friendship -

The family, to whom we belong, are the ones chosen by God, but the family which we can choose on our own are friends. A person can be entirely himself in a sincere friendship without worrying about being criticised . You experience an emotion of acceptance and love. In essence, genuine friendship is what enables us to persist through life. Here are a few sample essays on Importance Of Friendship.

100 Words Essay on the Importance of Friendship

200 words essay on the importance of friendship, 500 words essay on the importance of friendship.

Also Read | Friendship Day Speech

One can always have many friends around but there are always one or two people who can be trusted blindly and they are ready to support each other without fail. These are the most valuable and unforgettable people of our life. Friendship is a unique gift from God that allows people to experience many resonant emotions with one another. A true friend is the most truthful, selfless, and selfless in giving advice and making extraordinary sacrifices . Friendship is a pure bond between two or more individuals which makes them complete when they are together. Friendship is also a pure form of love.

When we have friends around, life’s path is more enjoyable and memorable. Getting connected to people around with whom our interests and likings match is very natural. Even young kids start playing with unknown kids of their age just with this interest. Life is a journey and it demands companions who will be with you at difficult and happy times. No doubt, that family is always there to support but many times we are outside the cosy boundaries of our immediate family. At that point in time, we need friends around to believe, support and love us unconditionally.

Also Read | Friendship Essay

Lucky are those who are surrounded by true-hearted and faithful friends . The amazing fact about friendship is that it doesn’t depend on the age we are in. Everyone gets a chance to choose and make friends in different phases and ages of their lives. We can be infants, young, middle-aged, or old. Friends are also good critics who let us know where we are at fault and correct us from time to time. They are an extended family. Sometimes friends can do what family cannot . We can share each aspect of our life with our true friends without any hesitation. It is always a blessing to have good friends in life.

Friends are the fuel of life without whom we have to push ourselves hard to move forward and make our life happy. Many times a person goes through some circumstances which cannot be discussed with the family but can always be discussed with a friend. We might have a number of friends, but there are a few who can be called true friends. They always drive us to lead in life. They boost our self-esteem by making us important in their lives. The sense and feeling of belongingness are supreme.

Also Read | Best Friend Speech

Friends share a great time of their life together experiencing the ups and downs. Friendship has been an antique bond. Even in Mahabharata, the bond between Lord Krishna and Arjuna was of friendship . From time to time Krishna corrected Arjuna and taught him ways to fight the battle in an intelligent manner. Krishna showed him the path and Arjuna followed him with complete faith. This kind of collaboration holds the utmost importance in human life. Sometimes we also feel aimless and struggle to make ways to eliminate the issues that we can’t handle. At that time friends hold our hands and make our way out. When we accomplish something in life, real friends are there to celebrate. They are always available when there is no one to support and help. Even one real friend in our life can lead to true positive changes in our life.

Importance Of Friendship In Childhood

Kids always show better understanding and holistic development when they are engaged with other kids of their own age group. In this way, they tend to learn faster by observing and imitating. In this age, friendship can yield fruitful results in their upbringing. This can also be seen if we talk about kindergartens. Here, kids learn to care for each other, share things among all and grow in a better way.

Also Read | My Best Friend Essay

Importance Of Friendship In Middle Age

A person in middle age is stuck in his personal and professional life. Everyone is aware of the stress and burden nowadays which does not give enough time to make oneself happy. All are clutched into their routines. But if we have friends then we can plan some time out with family and friends to get that heaviness off our shoulders and enjoy it a lot.

Also Read | A friend In Need Is A Friend Indeed

Importance Of Friendship In Old Age

In the absence of joint families nowadays, it has become tough for the old generation to have a good time and chit-chat with their other family members. When the middle generation is out for work or even stays apart for professional or personal reasons, the old aged can survive well in the presence of their friend circle. They can spend quality time with friends and feel light and happy.

A True Friendship

One day we saw a person on the road who had met with an accident and was looking for his family, calling them on the phone but were unable to connect. He also made a call to his friend for help and within 10 minutes his friend reached the spot and took him to the hospital for further treatment. His friend reached the place of an accident even before his own family could come and he also informed his family members to reach the particular hospital. It shows the kind of connection between friends.

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What is a Good Thesis Statement for Friendship: A Guide!

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Key Takeaway

Friendship and the role of thesis statements, definition of friendship.

It goes beyond basic acquaintanceship and is characterized by support, loyalty, and companionship.

True friends are there for each other during both good times and bad, offering a listening ear, advice, and emotional support.

Importance Of Thesis Statements In Academic Writing

In academic writing, a thesis statement plays a crucial role in conveying the main argument or focus of the paper.

It serves as a roadmap for the reader, highlighting the key points and providing a clear direction for the overall structure of the essay.

How Thesis Statements Aid In Conveying The Main Argument

A thesis statement acts as a concise summary of the main argument or position that the writer is putting forth in their paper.

It serves as a central idea that the rest of the essay revolves around, ensuring coherence and clarity.

Additionally, a strong and well-developed thesis statement helps the reader understand the purpose of the essay and what to expect from the ensuing content.

Creating A Focused And Coherent Essay

By incorporating a well-crafted thesis statement, writers can ensure that their essays are focused and coherent.

This allows for a logical progression of ideas and prevents the essay from becoming disjointed or confusing.

A solid thesis statement also enables the writer to stay on track and avoid unnecessary digressions, resulting in a more effective and persuasive piece of writing.

Craft A Strong Thesis Statement: Tips For Success

What makes a good thesis statement for friendship, exploring the key elements of a strong thesis statement.

A strong thesis statement serves as the backbone of an essay, guiding the reader on what to expect from the content.

Applying Those Elements To Friendship As The Topic

Crafting a thesis statement that captures the essence of friendship.

Crafting a compelling thesis statement requires capturing the essence of friendship in a clear and thought-provoking manner.

“True friendship transcends boundaries, nurturing personal growth, providing unwavering support, and standing the test of time. “

Remember, a good thesis statement sets the tone for the entire essay, making it essential to invest time and effort into developing a strong and engaging statement that will captivate the reader’s attention.

The Impact Of Friendship On Personal Development

Examining how friendship shapes one’s identity.

Friendship plays a significant role in shaping one’s identity, influencing their beliefs, values, and overall perception of the world.

Analyzing The Influence Of Friendship On Personal Growth And Self-Discovery

The role of friendship in cultivating empathy, understanding, and emotional well-being.

Remember, a good thesis statement for friendship should address the impact of friendship on personal development, analyze its influence on self-growth and self-discovery, and examine how friendship cultivates empathy, understanding, and emotional well-being.

Can Friendship in Mortal Kombat 11 Be Related to Friendship in Real Life?

Friendship in Mortal Kombat 11 can be related to real-life friendship. Just like in the game, learning to execute MK11 friendship moves takes practice and dedication. Similarly, in real life, building and maintaining friendships requires effort and understanding. Both rely on mutual respect and consideration for others.

How to Maintain a Strong Friendship Without Dividing?

The importance of trust and communication in friendships, exploring the significance of trust and open communication in maintaining healthy friendships.

Trust and communication are two vital pillars that uphold any friendship. Without them, the foundation can crumble, leaving the relationship vulnerable.

Let’s delve into the key points surrounding the importance of trust and communication in friendships.

Building a Strong Bond:

Trust and open communication are crucial elements for maintaining healthy friendships. They establish a solid foundation, contribute to a strong bond, and prevent the detrimental consequences of a lack of trust and communication.

To summarize, crafting a strong thesis statement for friendship requires a deep understanding of the topic and its various aspects.

By expressing a clear and concise argument, one can capture the essence of what friendship truly means.

A good thesis statement for friendship should highlight the importance of trust, mutual support, and empathy as the foundation of lasting relationships.

It should also acknowledge the dynamic nature of friendships and the need for open communication and shared experiences.

Remember, a well-crafted thesis statement sets the tone for the entire essay, guiding the reader towards a deeper understanding of the significance of friendships in our lives.

So, whether you are exploring the role of friendships in literature, psychology, or everyday life, a strong thesis statement will serve as a compass to navigate your research and writing journey, ultimately leading to a more compelling and insightful analysis.

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I Will Punch You With Friendship

Friendship means little when it’s convenient meaning, leave a reply cancel reply.

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Host-National Student Engagement with International Friendships

International friendship (i.e., friendship between host-national and international students) is an important area of study for counseling psychologists. Host-national students’ engagement with international friendship is associated with cross-cultural learning, cognitive benefits, and a more nuanced understanding of race and stereotyping. Even with these benefits, international friendships appear to be infrequent. In this dissertation, I present two distinct chapters to investigate international friendship more deeply. In Chapter 1, I summarized benefits of and barriers to international friendship. Additionally, I described how relevant friendship theories have guided the current international friendship literature. I concluded Chapter 1 by identifying limitations to current research, making recommendations for future research, and offering implications for counseling psychologists. In Chapter 2, I performed a latent profile analysis to identify three profiles of host-national students based on their attitudes, behaviors, and demographic factors. I used these profiles to analyze how international friendship engagement varies by their profile group membership. I then contextualized these profiles in research and theory and identified limitations to the current study.

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Essay on Friendship | Importance of Friendship Essay for Students and Children in English

February 21, 2023 by Veerendra

Essay on Friendship: Friendship is a treasure trove of connections on love and acceptance. It’s a bond developed between those who feel at home. The friendship bond one develops, can last for a day, a month, or even years. It’s not necessary to develop friendships based on similar emotions or feelings; friendships have no age, gender, or culture. You might be the adventure type, but your best friend(s) might be a nerd. From sharing stories to stealing chocolates, friendship holds special in the heart. However, life without a dedicated and trusted friend is sometimes lonely. Friendship is a relationship that grows stronger in time. Thus, essays on friendships are relevant topics

To aid students seeking essay write-ups for assignment purposes, here is a long and short essay for reference. Additionally, we have noted ten-line pointers as a map to guide you through the article for better understanding and help you frame better comprehension essays.

You can read more  Essay Writing  about articles, events, people, sports, technology many more.

Long and Short Essays on Friendship for Kids and Students in English

Below are two essays- a 400-500 words long descriptive Essay on Friendship for students and a 150-200 words Essay on Friendship for children on the topic that will guide you.

Long Essay About Friendship in English 500 Words

Long Essay on Friendship is helpful to students of Classes 7, 8, 9, 10, 1 and 12.

Friendship is the most expensive and beautiful gift one can give someone. As time passes by, lots of people will walk past, but only some stay with you forever, and those friendships will stick by one’s side through thick and thin. Lucky are those people with friends that can be trusted and wish to stay forever.

A person acquainted with diverse people in their life might be a part of a vast friend circle, but they would depend on just one or a maximum of two people whom they trust to their personal space and emotions. That bond created with those special people is true friendship. There are two basic types of friendships one develops- good friends and best friends. An authentic and special bond friendship grows with the true or best friend who makes life easier and happier.

The most crucial part of friendships is the judgment-free relationship. In a true friendship bond, a person is free of any gripping fears of judgment and can complete themselves. It makes the person feel accepted and loved. True friendship is the reason for people to stay strong in life with the assurance that their best friend is for them. A life devoid of friendship is an incomplete puzzle to keep one happy. A few have families and friends while some have lost their families, but, are backed up by friendships. Sometimes, one’s friendship becomes family. Thus, sharing a true friendship bond is a rarity.

Friendship holds significant stature in life as it teaches unforgettable life lessons. Some valuable lessons that will change your life, how to love others apart from family, how to behave in front of people or friends. Friendships never create bad times; instead, give one the best memories to live upon. Friendships teach you to understand and trust people. Real friends will constantly motivate and cheer; sometimes, they will even direct you the paths and save you. However, one should know how to differentiate between toxic and beneficial friendships.

Students can also find Paragraph on Friendship and Friendship Speech from here.

Similarly, friendship teaches the importance of loyalty and reliability. There is no greater feeling in the world than a loyal, trustworthy friend by your side. However, friendship isn’t a one-way path, to experience loyalty and trust; one needs to return the mutual feelings to complete the circle of friendship. Moreover, friendships build a strong relationship bond and aids to growth. For instance, despite fights and arguments, friends set the differences aside and come back together. This teaches patience and develops a strong bond.

Therefore, friendships are real-life connections. Real friends help each other during tough times and the difficult phases of life. They are only life-savers during a rough period, but also the best timely-advisers. True friends are the most assets of life who share the space of sorrow, happiness, and pain. They are the filler breaks of the monotonous life.

Short Essay on Friendship 100 Words In English

Short Essay on Friendship is helpful to students of classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Friendship is that special God-given gift to humans with whom one can share multiple resonating feelings. A good friend gives the right guidance and is the most sincere person devoid of personal motive and makes incredible sacrifices.

A good friend stands to guard irrespective of the fair and foul weather. It is always easy and straightforward to befriend someone; however, being a good friend takes a lifetime. Being a good friend or friendship is not a temporary phase in life.

Friendship is a sensitive and delicate bond that needs careful tackle to prevent the feeling of hurt. It may last for ages and form an unbreakable bond until one proves wrong. However, dissimilar people tend not to become friends. A strong friendship bond is developed when friends share a mutual value system, ideas, and taste. A friendship with no equal balance of emotions will break apart.

A good friendship needs communication. Good friends share each problem, difficulty, and sort out differences. They can help to mold the character, and one needs to be careful while befriending someone. That’s why friendships are a special gift from God.

10 Lines Essay About Friendship for Students

• Friendship is a bond between individuals based on mutual thoughts or mindsets.
• A good friend is that person with whom one can share their secret experiences and feelings
• Friendship grows stronger over some time and develops into a strong relationship bond
• A real friend guides direct and tries to bring out the best and positive change
• The ability to sacrifice is the crucial characteristic of friendship
• A true is ready to sacrifice for the betterment of the other
• Friendship holds special space for respect and responsibility
• ‘A friend in need is a friend in deed’ completes the essence and defines friendship
• Friendship comprises of care and support for each other during the hardest times
• Friendship is a bond that ensures happiness especially during times

you can also read Essay on Importance of Friends in our Life

Frequently Asked Questions on Friendship Topic Essay

Question 1. What is the appropriate age for a child to bond with friends?

Answer: Children develop friends when in preschool, but the child’s “friends” until the 12 will likely change frequently. However, friendships built after that become a bond.

Question 2. Why is the importance of friendships developed during childhood?

Answer: Friendships developed at the toddler stages help the child adapt quickly to the environment. Besides, it aids the child’s social and emotional development boosts their self-confidence.

Question 3. How long does a friendship last?

Answer: While some friendships last lifetime, some on an average last for about ten years.

Question 4. What is the most common reason for broken friendships?

Answer: The most common reason for broken friendships is life in general. People move on with life and eventually they lose their best friend(s).

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Of Friendship

The principal fruit of friendship:, the first fruit of friendship:, the second fruit of friendship:, the last fruit of friendship:, more from francis bacon.

Importance of Friendship Essay Example, with Outline

Published by gudwriter on May 10, 2018 May 10, 2018

Ready for importance of friendship essay? Take a look at this informational resource featuring an outline, APA style format, and a list of references. Use ideas from this essay sample to form the focus of your writing assignment. To achieve high grades order admission essays from experienced tutors who will help you with your essay.

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Importance of Friendship Essay Outline

Introduction.

Thesis: Friendship brings people together in a bond that helps them realize and experience a meaningful life.

Paragraph 1:

A good friend is always available irrespective of the circumstances.

• A true friend cares for their friends, accepts them unconditionally, tolerates their shortcomings, and encourages them even in the face of hopelessness.
• A loyal friend makes one to be who they are without fearing victimization or judgment.
• A good friend can know one more than one knows themselves.
• A friend can tell one without fear what one does not want to tell oneself.

Paragraph 2:

Friendship is like a partnership since it brings two people together on equal terms that are binding to both of them.

• Friends give their all and love each other unconditionally and do even more so as to sustain it.
• The ugly, the bad, and the good should be endured in friendship.
• A good friend brings out the best in someone.
• A person in friendship expects their initiatives to be attended to even when they are down with illness.

Paragraph 3:

Friendship can be compared to family and can even do more than a family could do for a person.

• Sometimes, the friends one has are the family they wish they had or the family they find easier to deal with as compared to their blood family.
• One’s blood family may ignore, ridicule, judge, or even misunderstand them.
• One may get from their friends that which they do not get from their family.
• A true family is not linked by the bond of blood but the bond of joy and respect in each other’s life.

Paragraph 4:

“A friend in need is a friend in deed” is an old cliché that speaks about true friendship.

• It essentially means that a true friend will always help in times of need.
• I fully understood the meaning of this saying when a classmate friend of mine once handed in my takeaway assignment in my absence.

Friendship brings people together to form a greater and stronger whole than its individual parts. Friends act and react in ways that show that they love and care for each other.

Importance of Friendship Essay Example

Almost every human being has friends or at least a friend with whom they spend time together. Friendship is about knowing someone better than others do and counting on them whenever the need arises. A friend is like a gift that one gives oneself. It is doubtless that out of friendship, one lives the fullness of life. Some of the qualities that are expected from friendship include trust, honesty, and authenticity. These are qualities that are majorly concerned with remaining true to a friend and providing them a shoulder to lean on all the time. Friendship brings people together in a bond that helps them realize and experience a meaningful life. Gudwriter offers two paragraph essay examples from any topic.

A good friend is always available irrespective of the circumstances. A true friend cares for their friends, accepts them unconditionally, tolerates their shortcomings, and encourages them even in the face of hopelessness. Even at that moment when everyone decides to walk away from a person for whatever reason(s), their true friend would walk in and be with them and support them. With a loyal friend, one can be who they are without fearing victimization or judgment because they know the friend fully understands them. A good friend can as a matter of fact know one more than one knows themselves. In addition, a friend can tell one without fear what one does not want to tell oneself. If one is on a wrong path, the friend would tell them as soon as they notice it.

Additionally, friendship is like a partnership since it brings two people together on equal terms that are binding to both of them. They give their all and love each other unconditionally and do even more so as to sustain it. In a friendship, there should be expected to be the ugly, the bad, and the good, all of which should be endured. A good friend brings out the best in someone by encouraging them and prevailing upon them to make the best out of their abilities and strengths. Just like in a business partnership, a person in friendship would expect their initiatives to be attended to even when they are down with illness. This is why it could be true to say that life is partly what one makes it and partly what the friends they choose make it.

Friendship can also be compared to family and can even do more than a family could do for a person. Sometimes, the friends one has are the family they wish they had or the family they find easier to deal with as compared to their blood family. One’s blood family may ignore, ridicule, judge, or even misunderstand them. In such a case, they would get from their friends that which they do not get from their family. However, in the best case scenario, friendship can also develop between or among family members. Normally, a true family is not linked by the bond of blood but the bond of joy and respect in each other’s life. One should consider a good friend of theirs as their greatest relation because just one loyal friend is more than a thousand relatives.

“ A friend in need is a friend in deed ” is an old cliché that speaks about true friendship. It essentially means that a true friend will always help in times of need. I never really gave much weight to this saying until I once had to rely on a friend and classmate for an important favor. I had missed school due to an unavoidable circumstance on a day everyone in the class was to hand in their final takeaway assignment in print format. I tried calling people I had thought were my friends among my classmates but none was willing to help. When I was just about to give up, Jasmine, a classmate who was not so close a friend, called and asked me to email her my assignment. I later learnt she downloaded the assignment, printed it, and handed it in together with hers. From then, I am careful about people I treat as friends.

Friendship brings people together to form a greater and stronger whole than its individual parts. Friends act and react in ways that show that they not only love each other but care for them too. It is akin to striking a partnership in which one partner is always there for the other partner in his or her absence. Friends broaden each other’s horizon by opening new doors for each other. They seek to soar beyond limits as a single determined force. Indeed, friendship guarantees one a meaningful and fulfilling life.

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127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

When you have a good friendship topic, essay writing becomes as easy as it gets. We have some for you!

📝 Friendship Essay Structure

🏆 best friendship topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 good essay topics on friendship, 🎓 simple & easy friendship essay titles, 📌 most interesting friendship topics to write about, ❓ research questions about friendship.

Describing a friend, talking about your relationship and life experiences can be quite fun! So, take a look at our topics on friendship in the list below. Our experts have gathered numerous ideas that can be extremely helpful for you. And don’t forget to check our friendship essay examples via the links.

Writing a friendship essay is an excellent way to reflect on your relationships with other people, show your appreciation for your friends, and explore what friendship means to you. What you include in your paper is entirely up to you, but this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t structure it properly. Here is our advice on structuring an essay on friendship:

• Begin by selecting the right topic. It should be focused and creative so that you can earn a high mark. Think about what friendship means to you and write down your thoughts. Reflect on your relationship with your best friend and see if you can write an essay that incorporates these themes. If these steps didn’t help – don’t worry! Fortunately, there are many web resources that can help you choose. Browse samples of friendship essays online to see if there are any topics that interest you.
• Create a title that reflects your focus. Paper titles are important because they grasp the reader’s attention and make them want to read further. However, many people find it challenging to name their work, so you can search for friendship essay titles online if you need to.
• Once you get the first two steps right, you can start developing the structure of your essay. An outline is a great tool because it presents your ideas in a clear and concise manner and ensures that there are no gaps or irrelevant points. The most basic essay outline has three components: introduction, body, and conclusion. Type these out and move to the next step. Compose an introduction. Your introduction should include a hook, some background information, and a thesis. A friendship essay hook is the first sentence in the introduction, where you draw the reader’s attention. For instance, if you are creating an essay on value of friendship, include a brief description of a situation where your friends helped you or something else that comes to mind. A hook should make the reader want to read the rest of the essay. After the hook, include some background information on your chosen theme and write down a thesis. A thesis statement is the final sentence of the first paragraph that consists of your main argument.
• Write well-structured body paragraphs. Each body paragraph should start with one key point, which is then developed through examples, references to resources, or other content. Make sure that each of the key points relates to your thesis. It might be useful to write out all of your key points first before you write the main body of the paper. This will help you to see if any of them are irrelevant or need to be swapped to establish a logical sequence. If you are composing an essay on the importance of friendship, each point should show how a good friend can make life better and more enjoyable. End each paragraph with a concluding sentence that links it to the next part of the paper.
• Finally, compose a conclusion. A friendship essay conclusion should tie together all your points and show how they support your thesis. For this purpose, you should restate your thesis statement at the beginning of the final paragraph. This will offer your reader a nice, well-balanced closure, leaving a good impression of your work.

We hope that this post has assisted you in understanding the basic structure of a friendship paper. Don’t forget to browse our website for sample papers, essay titles, and other resources!

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• Friendship and Peer Networking in Middle Childhood Peer networking and friendship have a great impact on the development of a child and their overall well-being. Students in elementary need an opportunity to play and network with their peers.
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• Analysis of Internet Friendship Issues Despite the correlation that develops on the internet, the question of whether social media can facilitate and guarantee the establishment of a real friend has remained a key area of discussion.
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• Educator-Student Relationships: Friendship or Authority? Ford and Sassi present the view that the combination of authority and the establishment of interpersonal relations should become the way to improve the performance of learners.
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• Friendship in the Analects and Zhuangzi Texts The author of “The Analects of Confucius” uses the word friend in the first section of the text to emphasize the importance of friendship.
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• “Is True Friendship Dying Away?” and “The Price We Pay” Then Purpose of the essay is to depict the way social media such as Facebook and Twitter have influenced the lifestyles of every person in the world.
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• Feminism and Modern Friendship While criticizing these individuals, Marilyn asserts that the omission of sex and gender implies that these individuals wanted to affirm that social attachment such as societies, families, and nationalities contribute to identity rather than sex […]
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• Why International Students Find It Hard to Make Friends On the other hand, in societies that promote a high power distance, less powerful individuals accept their position in the chain of command and acknowledge the strengths of their superiors in the hierarchy.
• Gender Stereotyping and Friendship: Women Relationships The most interesting about this article is its ending which states that” the core of a friendship has to have more in-person interactions and experience”.
• The Impact of Friendship in the Epic of Gilgamesh The elusive coalition between Enkidu and Gilgamesh, their fateful destinies and eventual epiphanies broaden the societal apprehension of the elements/value of friendship as expounded in the next discussion.
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• An Analysis of Friendship and Rejection in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• A Discussion on the Different Types of Friendship
• An Analysis of Friendship in Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• A Literary Analysis of Friendship in a Separate Peace by John Knowles
• An Analysis of the Concept of Friendship in A Separate Piece by John Knowles
• A Separate Peace and Of Mice and Men – Real Friendship
• The Theme of True Friendship in the Book of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• The Value of Friendship in Great Expectations
• What Makes A Good Friendship
• The Theme of Friendship in Separate Ways by Higuchi Ichiyo and Uncanny Stories by SongLing
• Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism
• The Waltz Of Sociability : Intimacy, Dislocation And Friendship
• The True Meaning of the Word Friendship
• A Description of Impartiality, Beneficence and Friendship According to Lawrence Blum
• Aristotle ‘s Views On Friendship
• Friendship and Courage in The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• An Analysis of Friendship and Loyalty in the Film The Deer Hunter
• Turning Away from True Friendship
• Different Types of Friendship and The Need for Friends
• An Analysis of the Dangers of Friendship
• The Victorian Female Friendship and Homosexual References in Emily Dickinson’s Work
• What Is Friendship And How Is God Man ‘s Best Friend?
• The Venerable Kassapa Thera: A Living Symbol of Dedication, Courage, Altruism and Intimate Friendship
• “The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds” by Michael Lewis
• Building from Happiness to Friendship
• What Do You Think Steinbeck Says About the Theme of Friendship in of Mice and Men
• Distributive Justice and the Problem of Friendship
• How Does Shakespeare Demonstrate That Love and Friendship Can Overcome Greed in the Merchant of Venice?
• Does Borrowing Money From Friends Harm Friendship?
• Can Friendship Be Defined by Any Scientific Criteria?
• How Can Enduring Happiness Arise From Friendship?
• Does Campus Diversity Promote Friendship Diversity?
• Is There Any Objection to the Teacher Establishing a Friendship Relationship With the Students?
• How Do Children Cope With Friendship and Death After Reading Charlottes Web?
• Does Ragging Develop Friendship?
• How Does Shakespeare Create Friendship?
• Should Becoming Friends With Benefits Ruin Your Friendship?
• How Does the Nature of Children’s Friendship Change With Age?
• Do Friendships Vary Across Countries?
• What Are Friends for and How Can a Friendship Be Tested?
• How Does the Theme of Loneliness Affect the Friendship and Relationships in “Of Mice and Men”?
• What Are the Elements That Build a Strong Friendship?
• How Does Friendship Help Students Succeed in the University?
• What Does Friendship Mean?
• How Does Friendship Help With Your Mental Health?
• What Does True Friendship Require?
• How Do Friendship Network Characteristics Influence Subjective Well-Being?
• What Was Aristotle’s Thought on Friendship?
• How Do Friendship Networks Work in Online P2P Lending Markets?
• Why Is Friendship Important?
• How Has Friendship Changed Because of the Spread of Social Networking?
• Why Does Friendship End?
• How Do Society and Culture Affect Friendship?
• Can Everything Be Bought for Money?
• How Do Gamers Take the Gaming Experience, Elements Such as Friendships Outside the Game Context?
• Do Friends Generally Have Similar Educational Interests?
• What Individual and Country-Level Factors Might Interact With Friendship Importance to Predict Health and Well-Being?
• Adulthood Titles
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• Communication Research Ideas
• Respect Essay Topics
• Self Esteem Research Ideas
• Victimology Research Ideas
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• Conflict Resolution Essay Topics
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• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, February 24). 127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/friendship-essay-examples/

"127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 24 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/friendship-essay-examples/.

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IvyPanda . 2024. "127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 24, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/friendship-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 24, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/friendship-essay-examples/.

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IvyPanda . "127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 24, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/friendship-essay-examples/.

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Islamic Terrorists Threaten To Kill Kidnapped Clergymen in Nigeria

Episcopal presiding bishop-elect plans simpler installation, citing ‘carbon footprint’, presbyterian church (usa) votes to divest from israel bonds, kirk franklin and chandler moore join will smith for live performance at the bet awards, ‘you’re going to have to choose’—what billy graham told his son, franklin, 50 years ago, ‘faith. family. friends. football.’—la rams’ cooper kupp says football isn’t the most important part of life.

As the Los Angeles Rams’ wide receiver and Super Bowl 2022 MVP , Cooper Kupp’s accolades keep rolling in. But that’s not what he wants to talk about. In fact, Daily Grind —a podcast started by Cooper and his wife, Anna—focuses on their adventures in parenting, their new coffee shop, and a few behind-the-scenes football stories.

“It’s not about getting through today. It’s making the most of today,” said Cooper.

Cooper Kupp Disagrees That You Need To ‘Sacrifice Your Soul for Success’

A third-generation NFL player , Cooper Kupp began dating his now-wife, Anna, while in high school. He has been outspoken about his faith on and off the football field as the couple raises their three boys . The couple just launched a podcast where they are authentic and transparent in their celebrations and struggles.

“We’re trying to thrive. We want to be there for our boys and not feel like we’re just kind of surviving with our boys,” Cooper said. “But we’re giving them an opportunity to grow into what they’re going to be—men of God.”

Cooper said with a laugh, “We live in the midst—among the midst—of craziness.”

The couple shared appreciation for their boys. “We have great boys. Our boys are incredible,” Cooper said. “In the middle of the day, we’ll be like, ‘Wow, we just feel so incredibly blessed by our family and the love that we get to share in our home.'”

Cooper recognized that the parenting load falls to Anna during the football season. “The times that it gets really wild is really during the season when you’re going ‘solo-dolo,'” he said. It’s in those times that they focus on “finding balance” and attempt to avoid “burning out.”

Whether on or off the field, Cooper attempts to “keep the priorities just where they need to be.” He said, “I put faith, family, friends, football,” in that order.

Anna explained that during the football season, priorities do get out of balance. “There’s such a huge focus on football—which it needs to be because that is your job,” she said. So the couple allows “room and flexibility and grace” for each other.

“I think finding stillness is an important thing,” offered Cooper. “Stillness to me is very different than being stagnant.” Being stagnant, the couple explained, is when there is a lack of intent, focus and movement. Stillness, on the other hand, is a purposeful rest.

Cooper referenced and summarized football coach Bill Walsh’s philosophy. He offered quite a bit of respect for the coach who contributed so much to his team and to the overall game. Walsh’s argument is that if players are not in a bad place, at odds with their families and losing sleep—then they’re not committed enough to the goal.

“Players are taught…you need to sacrifice your soul for success,” Cooper said. “I couldn’t disagree more…I know that as a football player, when everything else is in alignment, when my priorities go: faith, family, friends and football, I’m in such a better place.”

In 2018, Cooper tore his ACL, prematurely ending his football season. The injury ended up being one more opportunity for the couple to work together. “You were in pain. There were so many external emotions that you’re working through,” Anna said . “And then just to watch football on Sunday as if nothing had happened and our world is completely turned upside down.”

Cooper mentioned, “I would never sacrifice being the best husband, being the best dad” to achieve more success on the field.

He described a job and marriage as accessories to a relationship with God. “They all exist together, and it’s not that one can’t exist without the other, but those all need to be in harmony with each other,” he said.

Cooper and Anna parent their three sons together while they navigate the many demands on their time. “There are frustrating times where we’re both exhausted at 3:00 in the morning trying to figure out how to get this child to close his eyes and just sleep,” described Cooper.

“We get to go through this together,” he reflected. Even in the trying times of parenting, Cooper and Anna rely on each other. And because of the teamwork with Anna, Cooper feels free to be fully present at work on the football field.

“As soon as I’m done here, I get to go home, and I can be right there and be 100% the best dad I can be, the best husband I can be.”

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HOW TO CABIN THE REALIST INDETERMINACY THESIS: ON GREEN, POSITIVISM, AND THE SOURCES OF LAW

To appear in a collection of essays on the philosophy of Leslie Green, edited by T. Adams, K. Greasley, and D. Reaume (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)

21 Pages Posted:

Brian Leiter

University of Chicago

Date Written: July 01, 2024

Leslie Green raised an important challenge to my reconstruction of the American Legal Realist (ALR) arguments for the indeterminacy of law and legal reasoning:  how can those arguments be limited, as I claim, to mostly appellate cases?  The key, I argue, is to recognize that (1) the central ALR argument for indeterminacy appeals to the existence of equally "legitimate" but conflicting ways of interpreting valid sources of law, and (2) the relevant notion of "legitimacy" is sociological (i.e., what is actually accepted by lawyers and judges).  The ALR argument for indeterminacy being most apparent at the appellate level is then an empirical claim, which the ALRs supported with extensive evidence in many areas of law.  I also consider Green's suggestion that ALR takes most sources to be "permissive sources" (in Hart's sense), and criticize some misunderstandings of both ALR and Scandinavian Realism. 

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

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