You don’t really choose your friends for life

For many adults over the age of twenty, friends come and go as people change jobs, move or have children.

But friendships from our teens to our twenties can often fall into a completely different category, staying strong for decades while everything else around us changes.

Research shows that most of us keep at least one close friend from our teenage years (usually defined as ages 10 to 24) who we turn to during difficult times, changes, and celebrations, even if we haven’t seen them in years.

AND scientists say there are good reasons why the friendships we make during this period of tremendous change and development can not only last a lifetime, but even change the structure of our brains.

Sarah-Jane Blakemore, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, explained: “Adolescence is a critical period for building friendships, and friendships formed in adolescence can last a long time.

“This is a period of our lives when we undergo significant changes in our sense of self, and especially in our ‘social self’ – the way we present ourselves to other people. This includes the peer group we want to be a part of and our social relationships.”

The power of this friendship is amplified even more because the brain is wired to pay much more attention to new kinds of experiences. During this formative period, there will be many of them, and they will often be associated with friends, which means that they are more likely to fit into our consciousness.

Meanwhile, during adolescence, the brain releases more of the feel-good hormone dopamine when we’re having a good time than at any other time in our lives, heightening our experience of friendship during this time.

Professor Blakemore said: “The brain is particularly malleable and malleable during adolescence, including regions of the ‘social brain’. This suggests that your social environment, the people around you and your relationships with your peers can play a role in shaping and shaping the development of your brain.”

Dopamine levels rise during adolescence to help the brain develop, signaling through heightened feelings of pleasure that something good has happened and needs to be remembered.

This can lead to changes in the connections between brain cells and the nervous system, known as “neuronal connectivity,” that make it easier to repeat an activity, which can form habits.

Although friendships formed in adolescence can be very intense — and may well prove to be long-lasting — friendships formed years later are more likely to last, the professor said.

“During early adolescence, young people often try out different identities, for example perhaps in terms of their fashion sense, musical tastepeer group and even their values. They can change peer groups and friendships. By the time they reach their late teens or early twenties, they usually have a stronger sense of self-identity and friendships may be less likely.”

A survey conducted exclusively for Paper i found that 83 percent of Britons over 30 are still friends with people they were friends with at school or university, and in most cases those friendships are close.

These friends do not necessarily have to have studied at the same school or university – they can be, for example, old family friends or people they knew before school. But friendship will be mostly established during this period.

The survey also found that 60 percent were “very likely” to confide in one of their old friends when times get tough, regardless of how often they see them, and 23 percent were “somewhat likely.”

According to a survey of 200 adults between the ages of 30 and 84, conducted by cognitive neuropsychologist Catherine Loveday, there were no significant differences between men and women.

“It’s understandable to me that people have an attachment and probably a lot of nostalgia for the friends they had when they were younger, but I was genuinely surprised by how many people still maintain close friendships,” said Professor Loveday of the University of Westminster.

“I expected more differences between men and women, as some studies show that men are not very keen on maintaining friendships. But it seems that when it comes to old friends, maybe they are.”

Another factor behind the strength of teenage friendships is known as “attachment theory” and relates to the changing role that friendship plays during this period, when our primary “attachment” shifts from parents to friends.

Where are friends in early childhood mainly provide communication and entertainmentadolescent friendships also begin to fulfill other needs for trust, closeness, affection, and emotional support.

“The most likely time to find best friends would be adolescence, a time of greatest biological, psychological, and social change. It’s the first time we’re ‘nesting’ and it’s our first opportunity to ‘attach’ to other people,” said Andrea Oskis, a psychology lecturer at Middlesex University.

She said the survey results underscored how much “we need figures of our affection in times of distress.”

“It is this dedicated and purposeful search that is important for a person to be a ‘bond of affection’ and not just a tender, social bond. Help-seeking is an important part of an attachment relationship—it’s more than just an exchange; it’s about alleviating suffering,” she said.

The way memories are formed during adolescence is also thought to strengthen these friendships.

“Reminiscence” describes a general tendency for adults to recall their most autobiographical memories when they were between the ages of 10 and 30.

In the case of music, where the term is most commonly used, the “cone” explains how we tend to like the songs we listened to in our youth the most, considering them better than the music of today.

It’s not the same as nostalgia, but it’s enhanced by nostalgia, which is especially strong for memories made during this time in our lives.

And this concept applies to other areas such as movies and books, and Professor Loveday believes it can also be applied to friends.

“Some of your strongest memories of a person are memories of what happened when you first met them, or the pivotal moment when you decided that person was going to be your friend, or something really important that solidified the friendship. And these memories seem to be especially strong in adolescence,” she said.

An old acquaintance: why we communicate with old friends

According to a survey of 200 adults aged 30 to 84, the top reasons we reach out to old friends. Paper i:

– Birthday: Birthdays of childhood friends are especially reliable, we just don’t forget them.

– Christmas/New Years: This was much more common than other holidays or summer time.

– Hard times: Many people said that old friends are the ones they are most likely to turn to when something hard happens.

– News of life events

– Other: common interests, special occasions, random memory trigger, meetings, anniversaries (often of death), visits to hometown.