Strong, supportive friendships and a drive to fit in with peers during adolescence may be one of the best predictors of long-term health, a recent study published in Psychological Science demonstrates. People who had close teenage friendships exhibit less stress and stress-related symptoms later in life, acutely improving adult physical wellbeing.
In finding that friendship improves health, the researchers have turned the familiar, fuzzy feeling of friendship into a medical metric. They claim that the adolescent drive to make friends and fit in may even be instinctual, dating back to humans’ primordial, power-in-numbers mentality. Even as Western culture no longer relies on tribalism for survival and lauds individual autonomy, adolescent’s bodies may be pushing them to conform to peer pressure in order to protect their health later in life.
How They Studied This: Like the Movie Boyhood, Without the Cameras
The researchers’ most recent round of health tests was done on 171 people 27 years of age, comparing their body mass index, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and overall health. But these are the same 171 people that the researchers have been following for the past 14 years, starting when they were in 7th or 8th grade.
Researchers chose this diverse group of 171 early teenagers from all different backgrounds and socio-economic classes. Each participant was asked to choose a good friend of the same sex, who for the next four years would evaluate that friend’s abilities to make and keep friends, and also how much energy they put into conforming with their peers.
The results confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that friendship improves health, but they are nonetheless astounding: the strength of adolescent friendships, and even the simple drive to fit in, are strong indicators of better health in later life, transcending other influential variables like household income, body mass index, and drug use.
A Daily Dose of Conformity, Found At Your Nearest Pharmacy
Does this mean that doctors will start prescribing doses of conformity to their teen patients? Yes and no. If the finding that adolescent friendship improves health is adopted by mainstream medicine and psychology—which is by no means a guarantee—then yes, psychologists and doctors will begin considering teenage friendship as a contributing factor to later-life health problems. They may also be less complicit with some teen’s insistence on straying from the pack, warning that an obsession with independence and differentiation may lead to health problems down the line. Peer pressure, apparently, is not so bad after all.
What remains more important to the study are the supportive friendships, not the conformity. Those adolescents who conform to shallow trends in order to fit in but are still unable to forge deep, lasting friendships may still suffer the same stress-related health problems as those who never conformed in the first place.
The study does not imply that conformity is a prerequisite to friendship, but statistically, those who conform have on average a larger “peer pack” and a greater possibility for deep, long-lasting friendships—or just a greater feeling of inclusion and support than non-conformists do.
Knowing that friendship improves health, a psychologist or doctor is still more likely to coach an antisocial adolescent on the nature of their friendships than on their caving to peer pressure. Don’t expect your doctor to prescribe a teenager Ugg Boots and a North Face jacket for their long-term health. (Is that still what the kids are wearing these days?)
Do you have best friends from your teenage years? Share this article with them so they know they’ll be healthier just by knowing you!
Teen friendships can be great, but robots friendships are unbreakable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTuL0nLmBw8
Teen Friendships Can Improve Health Later On
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